What I Loved

by Siri Hustvedt | Literature & Fiction |
ISBN: 0340682388 Global Overview for this book
Registered by UrbanSpaceman of Strasbourg, Alsace France on 6/3/2006
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2 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by UrbanSpaceman from Strasbourg, Alsace France on Saturday, June 3, 2006
This book is part of the following of my reading list projects:

* 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die [#984]

Journal Entry 2 by UrbanSpaceman from Strasbourg, Alsace France on Thursday, July 20, 2006
"Every story we tell about ourselves can only be told in the past tense. It winds backward from where we now stand, no longer actors in the story but its spectators who have chosen to speak."

What I Loved is a subtle, richly detailed, fond, clever, romantic, tragic, inspiring and above all 'real' book. I am in awe of it and its author.

It is the story, told by Leo - a professor of art in New York, of the relationship between his family and that of the artist Bill Wechsler and the events that affect and shape them all over a thirty year period.

Described like that, though, the book sounds as if it is an extended soap opera. There is, however, so very much more to it. Specific comments might tend to give away too much of the plot in advance, so I will confine myself to what I consider Hustvedt's strengths in this novel.

She writes in a profound manner about the nature of friendship, love, parenthood. She writes convincingly and intelligently about about art and the creative drive that inspires it. She writes knowingly and sensitively about people, their strengths and their foibles and how they interact. She writes about people that you come to care about and feel that you have known.

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Now on it's way to WormyOne as a copy for a book group she is arranging. I hope subsequent readers enjoy this as much as I did.

Journal Entry 3 by WormyOne from Brighton & Hove, East Sussex United Kingdom on Thursday, August 3, 2006
A big thank you to UrbanSpaceman for posting me this book. I'm getting ten copies together because it's going to be my selection when it's my turn to choose a book for my book group.

A review by Julie Myerson inside the front cover reads:

"A genuinely disturbing urban thriller - there's violence, duplicity, murder and erotica - but it's also satisfyingly weighed down with the heft of marital and parental relationships and, maybe most importantly, with a profound and intelligent dialogue about love. Most impressively of all perhaps, Hustvedt takes us deeply and convincingly into the psyches of all these people...The intricacies of the relationships she depicts, the fragile sexual landscapes - whether comic and wobbly or romantically sweeping - snag at your heart...I can't remember the last time I finished a novel and truly believed I'd absorbed the taste and span of an artist's career as well as the pains and joys of 30 years of his sexual and emotional life, but this one convinced me I had".

Journal Entry 4 by WormyOne from Brighton & Hove, East Sussex United Kingdom on Thursday, May 8, 2008
My book group met on February 22nd 2007 (apologies for not journalling this before) and the group found the book as stimulating to discussion as I hoped they would. Some people found it off-puttingly dense and/or depressing but most were impressed by it. One person scored it ten out of ten.

Click here to see the journal of the copy I read.

This copy was kept by a member of my book group so who knows when it will next be journalled.

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