Siri Hustvedt's - What I loved
Hustvedt is the wife of Paul Auster, so it is difficult to discuss her work, without mentioning him, tho it is obviously unfair to compare.
Still there are clear borrowings from Auster's style. However this work is far more of a contrived novel, with both a time narrative and autobiographical aspects, it also has a wider character set and none of the 'magic' or alternate reality of Auster's works. Set in the art world of New York, it has many good parts, but some flaws, and characters (Mark) that are unconvincing.
One thing I want in a book that is about an artist and spends pages discussing the works is a visual accompaniment, I know its a novel, but I do so like illustrations in my books. I think this book, any book, would be improved by for instance the type of pencil drawings, which added so much to Peakes' Titus Groan books. Another major character is a poet, and again we get discussion of her works at length but no examples. Anthony Burgess, was always putting poets in his works (the Enderby novels esp.) and I always appreciated that he wrote in the poems (in various convincing styles) that his characters spoke of. Still anyway, it has some very good parts, below is a selection from a section wherein a woman who has been left responds:
'I thought I would have more time to chart your body, to map its poles, its contours and terrain, its inner regions, both temperate and torrid - a whole topography of skin and muscle and bone. I didn't tell you, but I imagined a lifetime as your cartographer, years of exploration and discovery that would keep changing the look of my map. It would always need to be redrawn and reconfigured to keep up with you.' - Siri Hustvedt, What I Loved, Hodder & Stoughton, 2003, page 58.
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