What I Loved: A Novel - Hardcover

Hustvedt, Siri

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805071709 ISBN 13: 9780805071702

Publisher: Henry Holt & Co, 2003

Synopsis

The long friendship between art historian Leo Hertzberg and artist Bill Wechsler leads to a growing involvement between their two families as they live in the same New York building, share a summer home in Vermont, and deal with the joys, sorrows, tragedies, and loss that transform their lives. 50,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

What I Loved is a deeply touching elegiac novel that mourns for the New York artistic life, which was of a time but now has gone--by extension, it is about all losses swept away by mischance and time. Half-blind and alone, Leo tells us of marriage and friendship, and makes the sheer fragility of what seemed forever not only his subject, but perhaps the only subject worth considering. Scholars Leo and his wife Erica admire, and befriend, artist Bill and his first and second wives--their respective sons Matthew and Mark grow up together until the first of a series of tragedies strikes. And things get gradually worse from then on, both because terrible things happen and because people do not get over them.

Part of the strength of this impressive novel is its emotional intensity and part is the context in which those emotions exist; these are smart and talented people, even the children, and we luxuriate, even when things are at their worst, in the sheer intelligence they bring to bear on their situations. It is also impressive that, for Hustvedt, intelligence is an end in itself rather than something that prevents tragedy or makes it more bearable. This is a powerful book because everything Leo knows makes him ever more the victim of exquisite pain. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

What I Loved restored my faith in novels featuring artistic endeavour, which too often fall prey to pretentiousness. Her central characters are undoubtedly middle-class creatures with cerebral concerns but their lives encompass real suffering too, which makes them more accessible ... This is an extraordinarily dense novel, with as much or as little scholasticism as the reader chooses to find. The symbolic motifs of childhood, from the story of Hansel and Gretel to the creation of imaginary companions, jostle with darker myths in the lives of these people; but there are also at least two fine love stories and many acts of kindness between friends. They do not deserve the tragedy which befalls them, but their very decency in the face of it has dignity and magnificence. (Image magazine)

The New York that oozes from her pages is dazzling, sexy, darkly lit. But this is also a wide, sensuous novel - clever, sinister, yet attractively real. It lives and breathes and never apologises for itself ... 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. (Julie Myerson, Guardian)

Hustvedt writes with chilling intensity, and with an intimate knowledge of New York ... eerie and atmospheric (Kate Chisholm, Daily Telegraph)

Hustvedt writes with chilling intensity, and with an intimate knowledge of New York. (Kate Chisholm, Telegraph)

A gripping intellectual read (Hugo Barnacle, New Statesman)

[Her] characters [are] so lovingly created, who endure such loss and heartbreak, that they'll have you weeping on to the pages while you try to work out what connects Charcot's hysterics to modern-day SoHo. (Alice Fisher, Time Out)

A dark, sexually charged and complex novel ... Rich in detail and visual imagery, this is a book to slowly savour and unravel. (Eve magazine)

You feel that Hustvedt can't help but use words with style and verve. The New York that oozes from her pages is dazzling, sexy, darkly lit. But this is also a big, wide, sensuous novel-clever, sinister, yet attractively real. It lives and breathes and never apologises for itself...It's 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, not only exploring what makes them tick emotionally (plenty of good writers can do that) but also dissecting the very impulse that makes them into artists and thinkers (far harder and rarer). In fact she writes with astonishing daring and clarity about the artisitic spark itself, the desire to search for meaning where there seems to be none, the need to create questions, even when there can probably be no answers. As a result, the intricacies of the relationships she depicts, the fragile sexual landscapes - whether comic and wobbly or romantically sweeping - snag at your heart. The descriptions of Bill's paintings and sculptures (endless and astoundingly detailed) are done with real conviction and never for one moment seem tedious or superfluous...Hustvedt's real achievement is to push the boundaries of the novel further, by making something of such sheer, daunting and inspiring largeness. 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. (Julie Myerson, The Guardian)

An extraordinarily dense novel, with as much or as little scholasticism as the reader chooses to find. The symbolic motifs of childhood, from the story of Hansel and Gretel to the creation of imaginary companions, jostle with darker myths in the lives of these people; but there are also at least two fine love stories and many acts of kindness between friends. They do not deserve the tragedy which befalls them, but their very decency in the face of it has dignity and magnificence. (Image magazine)

A consummately intelligent novel, highly literate but also intensely moving. It's impossible to read this superbly assured work about friendship, betrayal and love without weeping, because she manages so successfully to make you care about her characters and their disturbingly sad story. (Jackie McGlone, The Scotsman)

About this edition

• Publisher: Henry Holt & Co
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0805071709
• ISBN 13: 9780805071702
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 400