The Body of Jonah Boyd

by David Leavitt

Book Overview

Denny is a secretary who has just begun an affair with her boss, while also maintaining a friendship with his wife. Invited to the family's house for Thanksgiving dinner, she enters into a chain of... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1582341885
• ISBN13: 9781582341880
• Release Date: May 2004
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Length: 215 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A Satisfying Read

I read this novel when it first came out, so I don't remember a lot of details. However, what I do remember is that I liked it enough to give it as a gift to four different individuals -- all of whom enjoyed it as much as I did. I was actually checking out another book and this one was offered with it. Out of curiosity, I clicked on "Boyd" and was amazed to come across the recent negative reviews. This was one of the few novels I've read which, by the last page, every dangling question was answered -- sometimes in a very satisfying and surprising way. I would recommended this book to anyone.

The secretary: overworked and underpaid!

It's nice to see David Leavitt back on the literary scene again. The Body of Jonah Boyd is probably one of his best works - literary, erudite with an eye for the ironic, the novel is both delectably charming, while also managing to say something about the importance of home and the nature of writing. The story is narrated by Judith (Denny) Denham, secretary to Professor Ernest Wright, a Freudian in the psychology department at Wellspring, a fictional university. The tale opens, on Thanksgiving 1969, where Denny is being a sort of third wheel or domestic assistant to the Wright family: She's Ernest's mistress as well as his secretary, the four-hand piano partner of his wife, Nancy, and a general dog's body around the house. She's taken for granted and generally bossed about. Denny is an astonishingly perceptive character - she'd deeply flawed with a low self-esteem, but from the beginning there's a sharp contrast between the family's perception of Denny and her sharp view of what's really going on. The Wrights see her as "sexless spinster, or short of that, a lesbian" when, in fact, she has no trouble at all embarking on sexual escapades with men, including Ernest. Denny is always watching the family: she witnesses Ernest and Nancy's arguments, she offers support when their older son, Mark, flees to Canada to avoid the draft, and colludes with their daughter, Daphne, when she sneaks out of the house to meet her lover. Denny thinks the Wrights have invited her to into their family to make her the subject of some strange social experiment. Yet their motives for embracing her are far more individual: Nancy needs her to be a failure, Ernest needs her as an alternative to Nancy, and Daphne seems to need her as a confidante. On the Thanksgiving of 1969, Nancy's old friend Anne comes for a visit, bringing along her new husband, the novelist Jonah Boyd. After dinner Anne proceeds to get drunk while, Boyd reads from the first chapter of his new novel, which he's writing in a series of beautiful notebooks. He has no other copy, and he's forever misplacing the notebooks. After Boyd dazzles everyone with his reading, the Wrights' younger son, Ben, shares a sample of his own work, a distinctly anticlimactic poem. Boyd takes Ben under his wing, even reading to him from the prized notebooks. But when it's time to leave, the manuscript is nowhere to be found. Boyd's masterwork is lost. The second half of the novel is full of surprises and revelations that gradually reveal the secret of what actually happened to the notebooks. The story, full of ingenious plot twists, is interwoven with that of the Wrights' house, which itself emerges as an important character. According to Nancy the house "can be more than an assemblage of bricks and cement and shingles and it is not so different from believing in a guardian angel." The Body of Jonah Boyd remains a quite astonishing and compulsively readable tour de force. Leavitt has a slow-paced, richly descriptive, almo

The final chapter brings one more star to the novel

David Leavitt hit me when I was reading his acclaimed The Lost Languages of the Crane. Since then, everybody has been looking for a similar book. Yet, there is none. What I have observed from Leavitt's fictional works is that the plot and drama is rather thin. His previous work, Martin Bauman, personally, is a change in style and plot - but that does not work. As for his latest work, Body of Jonah Boyd, the same old problem persists.Before I read the last chapter of the book, I was confused with the ambivalence of the voice in the novel. The first half of the story was told by the protagonist, Denny. Later on, after several secrets were revealed, the chapters were dominated by the mysterious figure, Ben who happened to have stolen Jonah Boyd's notebooks and plagiarise the content as if it was his own. So, who is telling the story? Who is the centre of the book? The final chapter gave me the answer. The last chapter gives the story a touch of metafiction, and here, I am not able to tell so much or else the joy of reading this novel will be completely gone. Yet, I believe the way Leavitt ends the novel somehow heals a lot of defects found by the readers in the book. However, there are still weaknesses in the plot. The marriage of Ben and Denny near the end of the novel is unhinted and it comes a bit too artificial for the sake of the plot. The use of 'brain tumour' to solve every dramatic crisis seems to me a little bit irreponsible of the writer. The potential lesbianism between Denny and Ben's mother is there, but is not developed, at all. In general, this novel plays a great deal of metafictive techniques and centres too much on the plot of how an unsuccessful writer steals the work of a successful one. All other subplots, the romance and other human relationships, are not handled dramatically and fully enough. If you aim at a fast read and do not have much expectations on the plot, Leavitt's new book will be your choice. At least, after reading the last chapter, you may whisper, "That all makes sense in the end."

A book which is really a book

I have read several books by David Leavitt over the years and always have considered him an outstanding writer with a real point of view. As with any really gifted person, the intervening years from debut to maturity are witness to the results of one creation to the next. An interesting "geography" can often be observed. It is hoped that it is not a geography represented by plateaus alone. That is to say, that real talent inevitably will be represented by highs AND not-so-highs of creativity, both of which are essential to the development of an artist, musician/composer or a writer. For me, Leavitt has really come into his own with this book: a crystallization is quite discernible in this always admirable author. One of the things which pleases me most is that this book is, simply, a book. Leavitt has steered clear of the temptation to write something that is "adapatable". Certainly a good screen writer could manipulate it into a script, but the pacing, development and eventual denouement force it into the personalness of a "one on one" author to reader experience, clearly not seeking any other outlet for expression. I like this rejection of contrivance, the concept of which might be the hallmark of this novel. I could not put it down, and this is probably because Leavitt addresses so many aspects of life: a labrynthine, but never disorderly or disorganized exposition of academia, society in general, old and new friendships, deception, complicated psychological types, unsatisfied love and unfulfilled career aspirations, to name a few. That it is a mystery as well, and not even about the murder of Ernest Wright the typically aloof pater familias -professor/psychologist-philanderer is especially intriguing. I found myself thinking Leavitt's inspiration was perhaps drawn from a Robertson Davies/John Cheever mix, but it is the author's own voice at all times. It seems genuine enough that somewhere in the tale might be some of the author's own experience (the deep attachment to a home? - a certain disbelief and shock at the possibilities of displacement?) -- Forster's Howards End being a notable precursor. Besides the excellent character portrayals, clever architecture and accurately chronicled feel for life of thirty years ago, there is real pleasure in the fact that David Leavitt writes very, very well.

Leavitt keeps getting better!

I read THE BODY OF JONAH BOYD in one sitting. I have always enjoyed anything Mr. Leavitt has written. He's one of those writers whose work continues to grow and evolve.The art of the jacket of the novel is reminiscent of the cover of the first edition of FAMILY DANCING. I loved the sub-plot of the connection to houses in the novel; I too still feel a connection to my childhood home, and at age forty-five, still dream of it.The main character/narrator is Judith "Denny" Denham, secretary at a university, and she carries this story well. She recounts the story in flashback, of her relationship with the Wright family; her affair with the husband Earnest, an academic/psychoanalyst, and her friendship with the wife, Nancy, and the children, especially the youngest, Ben, with whom her relationship takes an unexpected yet logical turn at the end of the novel.Denny is a well-drawn character, but I was drawn to one of the lesser characters in the novel, Ben: his quirky eating habits (idiosyncrasies that make characters real) and the fact that he grew up to be a writer. I almost wished the novel could have been from his point of view, but that would have been a whole other story altogether. Denny is the right character to tell this story.I adored the 'homage' to JANE EYRE at the end, one of my top ten favorite novels: ".... reader, I married him". Hurray for Denny!Families and their relationships are a staple in Leavitt's writing. If you want a literary novel about families, this is the book to read.I only have one problem with Leavitt's latest work: it is too short. When I reached the last page, I wanted more.