What I Loved : A Novel | Siri Hustvedt | What I loved is This Book

What I Loved : A Novel | Siri Hustvedt | loved this

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What I Loved : A N...

	What I Loved : A Novel Siri Hustvedt, 2004 - 384 pages average customer review:based on 56 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

What I Loved begins in New York in 1975, when art historian Leo Hertzberg discovers an extraordinary painting by an unknown artist in a SoHo gallery. He buys the work; tracks down the artist, Bill Wechsler; and the two men embark on a life-long friendship. Leo's story, which spans twenty-five years, follows the growing involvement between his family and Bill's--an intricate constellation of attachments that includes the two men, their wives, Erica and Violet, and their sons, Matthew and Mark.The families live in the same New York apartment building, rent a house together in the summers and keep up a lively exchange of ideas about life and art, but the bonds between them are tested, first by sudden tragedy, and then by a monstrous duplicity that slowly comes to the surface. A beautifully written novel that combines the intimacy of a family saga with the suspense of a thriller, What I Loved is a deeply moving story about art, love, loss, and betrayal.

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What I loved is This Book

Siri Hustvedt's writing flows, its characters are painted with words. I see them, hear them and feel them. She knows art - the art scene, the politics, the inner conflicts and passion of an artist. It is so extremely rare to find someone who really gets it. It's easier to find a jar of gold nuggets in the street than it is to read a book about the art world that is real! I loved the story. As a novel, it works, and keeps the reader turning page after page because there are so many loose ends to tie together, conflicts to work out, mysteries to solve, and grief, love stories and passions filling the pages with depth and emotion. I would love to summarize the plot but I don't want to give anything away. The story centers around a passionate artist named Bill who has a need to create. He and Violet have a great love. Their story is told in the third person, in the voice of a male friend. This in itself is a great feat. Many authors attempt to narrate a story in the voice of another gender. It is not usually pulled off successfully. Ms. Hustvedt does this without it sounding awkward. I feel like a man is talking to me. I never doubt the narrator's gender. My only criticisms are that the sociopathy of one of the characters is obvious early on in the story but not actually acknowledged until late in the book. My other criticism is that Erica is not flushed out as a character and that her vaporous disappearance lacks credibility. These criticisms are small in the scheme of how marvelous this book is. It is rare that I want to read a book twice. I fully intend to read this book again. I savored every word and felt myself completely immersed in the flow and 'word-place' where this book took me. I was there; I inhabited the characters and their world. I was one with them, aware of nothing outside this book, completely immersed. Now, that is a real compliment. I thank you Ms. Hustvedt for your book.

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loved this

This book was in a bookstore in Seoul and I picked it up quite randomly while I was living there. It was 4 years ago now and I still am haunted by the amazing story she tells. It is one of my favorite books of the past decade.

What I Loved

This is a cerebral and compelling book, I think especially for those who are interested in art and the art scene. It is also very, very sad. A story of losing everything that mattered to the central character. Most in our book club liked it, but not all.

Absence makes the heart shrivel

Hustvedt's third novel revolves around problems of desire and fear, identity and merger, but one of its most important themes is absence, whether it's the wrenching absence experienced by grieving parents, the emotional absence of a distant father or mother, or the absence of understanding that bedevils people who miss the truth about themselves or each other. After the art-historian narrator, Leo, loses his son Matt in a freak accident, he tries to forge a friendship with Mark, the same-age son of his best friend Bill, a painter. Some reviewers have objected to the apparently sudden transformation of Mark from a regular kid (in the book's first third) into a troubled teen and then a monstrous psychopath (by the book's end). But readers with an interest in abnormal psychology will pick up on the clues Hustvedt gives us to Mark's etiology (his depressive, distant mother is only the first such clue). And anyone who has known someone with a damaged moral sense will find the portrait of Mark eerily recognizable: the habitual, seemingly pointless lies; the continual trying-on of different identities;the endless loop tape of trust and betrayal. The book opens with a description of the grand passion Bill shares with his second wife, Violet -- a passion that the narrator, Leo, has been preoccupied with for over twenty years. By the story's end, Violet poses the unanswerable question of what role her relationship with Bill has played in one of the most eerie absences imaginable -- the absence of empathy and compassion in an otherwise intelligent human being. This is a novel for which the word "haunting" is wholly appropriate.

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