SBD: Harvey, meet Eck. Eck, Harvey.

I must confess to irrational reasons for avoiding Erin O’Brien‘s novel, Harvey & Eck. True, Dean liked it, and so did SxKitten and Shaina. But I had these disturbing childhood associations with the word Eck — Los Angeles-based off-the-beaten-path-religion associations. You see, in Eckankar, ECK = spirit, but also represents the audible life stream, and at that point my eyes glaze over.

Let me reassure potential readers that Harvey & Eck has nothing to do with audible life streams, although it does have lots of spirit.

In Harvey & Eck, Harvey (short for Harvest Moon) writes letters to Eck (short for Timothy J. Ecklenburg), who at first is little more than a name she has chosen at random from the phone book. Harvey is young, broken-hearted, soon to be unemployed, and pregnant, and she has no one to talk to. So she decides to spill her guts to Eck.

Before long, Eck responds in kind, but since Harvey’s letters have no return address, Eck has no choice but to save his letters in a cigar box. From the outset, the relationship is uneven: Eck learns everything about Harvey, while for Harvey, Eck remains a black box mystery. The reader, of course, gets to see both their worlds.

It’s an interesting structure. On the one hand, this form packs a ton of narrative drive, thanks to a handful of ready-made puzzlers: Will Harvey ever read Eck’s letters? Will they meet? And, most importantly, how will each change the other?

The form has its limitations, too. It’s difficult for a letter to convey the immediacy of a scene, particularly in the beginning, when the characters have yet to ensnare the reader. Later on in the book, chronology becomes important, and I found it a little disruptive to have to check the dates of the letters. Now, how much time has elapsed since that last letter?

These turn out to be minor quibbles. I was skeptical at first, but within 30 or 40 pages, I had fallen under O’Brien’s spell and had become obsessed with question three: how will each character change the other?

I knew from the outset that Harvey had to change. The woman’s a cauldron of emotion; she couldn’t possibly get through this breakup/pregnancy/rocky marriage unscathed. More interesting (to me, anyway) was Eck, a tight-assed librarian who wears two wrist watches and charts every last chore on his calendar. At first, he’s almost cartoonishly anal, but as Harvey’s letters soften him up, he becomes a much more likable character.

Note to my Smart Bitches Day readers: there are two romances here, and Harvey + Eck isn’t one of them. Or at least, that one’s not a conventional romance. No, Harvey has her marriage to worry about, and Eck . . . well, that’s part of the joy here. Stuffy old Eck is overdue for some action, and Harvey’s letters give him the requisite kick in the pants.

I don’t think I’ll be giving away too much if I tell you that yes, Harvey and Eck both change. And isn’t that the most satisfying thing about fiction? The hero or heroine take charge of their destinies. They shape the world around them while the world changes them, and they come out the other side better, worse, damaged, whole . . . different. So, too, with Harvey and Eck, and the conclusion is both believable and heartwarming. Why, I think I even got a bit teary-eyed. (O’Brien, don’t get a swelled head. It doesn’t take much to get me teary-eyed.)

At first, I thought the setup in Harvey & Eck smacked of artificiality — cute concept, nice packaging (although no matter how many times I turned the book over, I never got to see Harvey’s tits), but could something like this really happen? And then I realized: I’m living this story.

Except, I’m Harvey.

No, my marriage isn’t on the rocks, and no, I’m not recovering from a breakup with some hunky guy nicknamed Captain Crunch. But I am in a long-term correspondence, daily emails (usually) with a friend for the last nine months. If I’m Harvey, my baby should be due any time now.

Unlike fiction, there’s no guarantee of change in real life. I would like to think that I’m a different person now, but I’m not so sure about my Eck. And it seems to me that that’s the real bitch about life: people can go on for years in the same mode, finding reasons to spurn change. Change is scary, and the present life, unpleasant though it may be, remains a known entity.

Well, enough about me. Go. Buy Harvey & Eck. It’s funny and sexy and nasty-sexy and sweet. The characters are not just likable but lovable. Harvey has a great ass in those Levis. O’Brien’s prose achieves uncommon goals — not only emotional truth (as Dean points out in his review) but inevitability. Everything makes sense, everything spills out from the characters themselves, and not because the author saw fit to boss them around.

O’Brien, make sure Harvey uses good sound protection when she takes li’l Webley out for a spin.

D.

Walnut, June 25, 2007. Category: Books 'n' Authors, Reviews.

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