Harmony Book

By Joanna Goodman

Penguin Canada, 354 pages, $18

Reviewed by Nisha Tuli

THE main problem with Toronto writer Joanna Goodman's new novel, Harmony, is that the story's earth-shattering secret becomes painfully obvious around page 60.

Anne Mahroum is an artist and the wife of a wealthy Lebanese coin collector.

She and Elie live in an upper-crust suburb of Toronto with their six-month-old son, Evan, who has been born with severe bilateral club feet.

After Evan's birth, Anne had begun to wonder about her past. Her mother, Jean, has always been vague and mysterious when talking about the life they escaped many years before.

The secret she harbours is supposed to be the twist in the tale. But references to a small town near Creston, B.C., a communal living arrangement, a backwards life, old-fashioned dresses and Jean saying "I wanted you to have an education and a career and to choose your own..." all seem to point in one direction.

(If you haven't figured it out yet, you should start watching The Fifth Estate and W-Five more often.)

As Anne tries to put the pieces together, it's a little hard to believe she doesn't clue in sooner. But maybe when a woman is also saddled with constant thoughts of cheating on her husband and obsessing over the fact her baby wasn't born completely perfect, there is little room for much else.

Playing the consummate bored housewife, Anne spends her days creating artfully designed tables, attending "Parents of Club Foot Babies" support groups, and wondering what her husband, Elie, is up to.

Both Anne and Elie possess a kind of misplaced and confusing superiority complex that doesn't endear them to the people in their lives.

They smirk at another couple because they listen to The Greatest Power Ballads of the '80s and '90s and shop at Pottery Barn, while they themselves own the entire box set of Sex and the City and buy generic Baby Gap clothes for their son.

But despite that, the pair does elicit a kind of sympathy. Anne flirts with safe men like the UPS delivery guy. Elie would rather spend time with his toys than his family. They both struggle with having a disabled son. These are things many readers will identify with.

This is Goodman's third novel, and her polished and simple writing style reads effortlessly. Ascribing to Anne such sentiments of quiet desperation as "she had no idea love could be so excruciating" and "loneliness is a kind of hell," Goodman is clearly aspiring to write a literary novel.

However, the result ends up falling somewhere between Helen Fielding and Margaret Atwood. Harmony is completely frivolous at times, and completely serious at others. Think of it as chick-lit with a sombre edge.

If you can forgive the fact that you'll likely know what's coming at the end, Harmony is a fast-paced and entertaining read.

Nisha Tuli is a Free Press summer intern.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 15, 2007