‘What I Loved’ by Siri Hustvedt

After more or less sleeping my way through all ninety-something pages of Animal Farm - the one redeeming feature of George Orwell’s supposedly magnificent political satire is, after all, its brevity - I was ready if not desperate for something truly riveting, something inspiring, something to restore my faith in the power of the novel. Fortunately for me I found all this and more in the first book I came to following my ill-fated foray into Orwell-down: What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt. Although I have heard the name many times before, especially of late following the release of her essay collection Living, Thinking, Looking, it was only a few weeks ago that I thought actually to buy one of her works, during a kind of ‘drive-thru’ book run at a local retail park which I seldom visit due to being unable/unwilling to drive. And, while I may have purchased the book in a hurry, it was certainly a decision that paid off: What I Loved is one of those rare and utterly remarkable novels which is impossible to explain in so few words yet is deserving of just about every superlative in the English language. And probably most others too. So, impossible to explain though it may be, please allow me to try…

Published in 2003 to a wall of acclaim, What I Loved is a gripping three-part novel set amidst the culturally and texturally rich art scene of 1970s/1980s New York. Though difficult to pigeon-hole, as truly great novels often are, I feel that the most appropriate way to describe What I Loved is as a painstaking exploration of the human condition that has all the pace and suspense you would expect of a thriller. The story is told through the eyes of Leo Hertzberg, a Jewish art history professor who - at the beginning of his tale - is living in arty, up-and-coming SoHo with his wife, Erica Stein, also a professor. Their lives soon collide with that of Bill Wechsler, a graduate of Yale University and Manhattan’s abstract artist du jour. In August 1977 Leo and Erica welcome a son, Matthew, and within weeks Bill’s wife Lucille gives birth to their son, Mark. I shall try not to reveal too much about the plot here, for Hustvedt delivers multiple unexpected blows which need to be experienced first-hand for their devastating effect, but as these two boys grow up there is tragedy and turmoil in equal measure, and if you are anything like me one boy’s tale will leave you heartbroken while the other’s will have you completely frustrated. Furthermore, without exposing some of the novel’s gorier details, the final third of What I Loved is an unexpectedly sinister affair, with a sense of dread pervading Hustvedt’s every elegant phrase.

This piece was originally published on alisonlaurabell.tumblr.com in July 2012.