What I Loved Siri Hustvedt Epub
Book: What I Loved (2015), Author: Siri Hustvedt, read online free in EPUB,TXT at ReadOnlineFree4.net. From the internationally bestselling author of What I Loved and The Summer Without Men, a dazzling collection of essays written with Siri Hustvedt's customary. Siri hustvedt what i loved epub Download siri hustvedt what i loved epub. Hustvedt what i loved epub.
Here is a big, ambitious novel about four talented, intelligent people - artists and intellectuals in New York - who first find love and friendship and then immense suffering. Bill, a talented and original artist, leaves Lucille, his emotionally stunted wife, for Violet, his passionate, vivacious model. Meanwhile their friends Leo and Erica live upstairs pursuing their own ecstatic marriage. The two couples have sons almost at the same time - Mark and Matt.
They vacation together in Vermont, they make love, enjoy food and good fellowship - life is good. And then two acts of unbearable tragedy occur (I won't reveal them) and everything is broken. One tragedy happens in an instant and provides the jarring fulcrum around which this book turns.
The other occurs slowly over the course of years. The protagonists struggle to preserve their loves, the lives they have built, their sanity - but the reality they face is too powerful. Everything falls apart; almost nothing survives the wreckage.
This is an absorbing and in many ways an admirable book. It is a novel of ideas that takes art seriously and brings it to life. There are dozens of other ideas woven through it - about the nature of sickness, of reality, of truth. The writing is vivid, the characters psychologically convincing for the most part.
Yet there is a spiritual emptiness at the center of these lives, a sense of life imitating art rather than the other way around. I found this novel impressive and occasionally shocking but I was not ultimately moved by it. It kept me at an emotional distance. I responded intellectually rather than feeling the joy and the pain. I admired its artistry a little too much.
Because I've been engaged in a book club with three others-one who likes fiction, one who likes it with reservations, and a third who views it with trepidation-I've been thinking about why I like fiction so much. Modern fiction, classic fiction, whatever-what always draws me is the way human nature is portrayed. What does it mean to be human? Is it sad, broken, lonely, joyful, complicated? Yes.This book is, for me, the dream of fiction, in that it tells us a story, and transports us, while at the same time tells us something about ourselves and our kind. The protagonists talk about friendship, loss, lust, grief, regret, art, and lies; they are betrayed and left behind and injured just as they are loved and buoyed and nurtured. They are beautiful and imperfect.
On every page I found something to love, something tender, bold, or poignant. I won't bother giving you a synopsis, because you can get that nearly everywhere else. What I will give you is my heartfelt recommendation. Siri Hustvedt places each word, each sentence, with the deliberate deftness of someone who understands the gorgeous twisting combined pain and pleasure of being alive.
Siri Hustvedt’s “What I Loved” is an unflinching dissection of two couples living in NYC circa the era of controversial performance art, raves and ecstasy, each with one son, all four adults involved in art or studies that involve the human body in what I’ll call extremes – mentally and/or physically disturbing. The book raises so many questions it’s hard to know where to begin. What constitutes art? What is the boundary between art and exploitation?
The narrator, Leo, is an art historian and his BFF Bill is an artist whose main body of work consists of boxes of various sizes that contain scenes and objects that puzzle, repel, and attract. Works that cause strong reaction both positive and negative. Hustvedt chooses not to tell in which way Bill’s childhood was troubled, but his brother Dan is mentally troubled and institutionalized.
What I Loved Siri
And as the book goes on, the focus is on Mark, Bill’s son. Gradually Mark sociopathic tendencies manifest themselves as he becomes involved with Giles, whose art is violent and questionable. There is a lot of emotional pain in this book. It is not for the feint of heart. I tussled with the male voice from the get go in this book. Three pages in I realized the narrator was male and not female. Perhaps a man can think like a woman.) But even after settling in to Leo’s narration and realizing what an intelligent book this is, I question Hustvedt’s choice of voice.
I thought this choice also forced women’s issues, so prominent in the first part of the book, to evaporate as the story went on and the women dealt with their hardships by moving on to new lives, while the men never recovered. That said, focusing on the men and having all the characters play the roles as they did, made for a more interesting and discussable story. So I have my quibbles, but I do not wish to deter interested readers from this book. It is perhaps one of the best books I’ve read on the essence (or non-essence) of art and the mystification of mental illness.
But get your constitution up first.
Here is a big, ambitious novel about four talented, intelligent people - artists and intellectuals in New York - who first find love and friendship and then immense suffering. Bill, a talented and original artist, leaves Lucille, his emotionally stunted wife, for Violet, his passionate, vivacious model. Meanwhile their friends Leo and Erica live upstairs pursuing their own ecstatic marriage. The two couples have sons almost at the same time - Mark and Matt.
They vacation together in Vermont, they make love, enjoy food and good fellowship - life is good. And then two acts of unbearable tragedy occur (I won't reveal them) and everything is broken. One tragedy happens in an instant and provides the jarring fulcrum around which this book turns. The other occurs slowly over the course of years.
The protagonists struggle to preserve their loves, the lives they have built, their sanity - but the reality they face is too powerful. Everything falls apart; almost nothing survives the wreckage. This is an absorbing and in many ways an admirable book. It is a novel of ideas that takes art seriously and brings it to life. There are dozens of other ideas woven through it - about the nature of sickness, of reality, of truth. The writing is vivid, the characters psychologically convincing for the most part. Yet there is a spiritual emptiness at the center of these lives, a sense of life imitating art rather than the other way around.
I found this novel impressive and occasionally shocking but I was not ultimately moved by it. It kept me at an emotional distance. I responded intellectually rather than feeling the joy and the pain.
I admired its artistry a little too much. Because I've been engaged in a book club with three others-one who likes fiction, one who likes it with reservations, and a third who views it with trepidation-I've been thinking about why I like fiction so much.
Modern fiction, classic fiction, whatever-what always draws me is the way human nature is portrayed. What does it mean to be human? Is it sad, broken, lonely, joyful, complicated? Yes.This book is, for me, the dream of fiction, in that it tells us a story, and transports us, while at the same time tells us something about ourselves and our kind. The protagonists talk about friendship, loss, lust, grief, regret, art, and lies; they are betrayed and left behind and injured just as they are loved and buoyed and nurtured. They are beautiful and imperfect.
On every page I found something to love, something tender, bold, or poignant. I won't bother giving you a synopsis, because you can get that nearly everywhere else. What I will give you is my heartfelt recommendation. Siri Hustvedt places each word, each sentence, with the deliberate deftness of someone who understands the gorgeous twisting combined pain and pleasure of being alive. Siri Hustvedt’s “What I Loved” is an unflinching dissection of two couples living in NYC circa the era of controversial performance art, raves and ecstasy, each with one son, all four adults involved in art or studies that involve the human body in what I’ll call extremes – mentally and/or physically disturbing. The book raises so many questions it’s hard to know where to begin. What constitutes art?
What is the boundary between art and exploitation? The narrator, Leo, is an art historian and his BFF Bill is an artist whose main body of work consists of boxes of various sizes that contain scenes and objects that puzzle, repel, and attract. Works that cause strong reaction both positive and negative. Hustvedt chooses not to tell in which way Bill’s childhood was troubled, but his brother Dan is mentally troubled and institutionalized. And as the book goes on, the focus is on Mark, Bill’s son. Gradually Mark sociopathic tendencies manifest themselves as he becomes involved with Giles, whose art is violent and questionable. There is a lot of emotional pain in this book.
It is not for the feint of heart. I tussled with the male voice from the get go in this book. Three pages in I realized the narrator was male and not female. Perhaps a man can think like a woman.) But even after settling in to Leo’s narration and realizing what an intelligent book this is, I question Hustvedt’s choice of voice. I thought this choice also forced women’s issues, so prominent in the first part of the book, to evaporate as the story went on and the women dealt with their hardships by moving on to new lives, while the men never recovered. That said, focusing on the men and having all the characters play the roles as they did, made for a more interesting and discussable story.
Siri Hustvedt
So I have my quibbles, but I do not wish to deter interested readers from this book. It is perhaps one of the best books I’ve read on the essence (or non-essence) of art and the mystification of mental illness. But get your constitution up first.