It was a bit over a hundred pages into The Blazing World when I first felt the uncanny shiver that Hustvedt is so adept at producing in her novels - especially that great pair of What I Loved and The Sorrows of an American - and it came when Harry's friend, Rachel Briefman, is describing an intense conversation between them and the dreams she has afterwards. I don't think it's coincidental that Rachel is a psychoanalyst (and psychiatrist) - that is, I don't think it's coincidental to my response ... I'm certain that her profession isn't coincidental to the role she plays in the book! - nor that dreams were involved.
The Blazing World is a demanding novel, and then again it's not. It's demanding in that it requires attention - due to the numerous and sometimes competing texts and perspectives that compose it, the fragmentary nature of some of Harry's journals in particular, and the heaviness, both intellectual and emotional, of the whole. And yet it's also, in many ways, a breeze to read, made so by Hustvedt's wonderful sentence level writing, the intensity of the plotting and its many mysteries, the threads that run through it and ultimately pay off in more or less satisfying and unexpected ways (including Harry's relationship with her parents, Ethan's oblique presence, and the role of the Barometer), and the dense emotional centres around which the whole thing is built, especially some of the central relationships, not least Bruno's and Harry's. (Also, I think it's a little piece of novelistic genius to bring back Sweet Autumn Pinkney in the way that she does - a kindness in so many ways.)
This novel has a power and urgency that pulled me through it, and a craft that impressed me. And Siri Hustvedt was already an iconic writer for me. I don't know quite how, or whether, it will linger, but finding out over time promises to be a pleasure.
The Blazing World is a demanding novel, and then again it's not. It's demanding in that it requires attention - due to the numerous and sometimes competing texts and perspectives that compose it, the fragmentary nature of some of Harry's journals in particular, and the heaviness, both intellectual and emotional, of the whole. And yet it's also, in many ways, a breeze to read, made so by Hustvedt's wonderful sentence level writing, the intensity of the plotting and its many mysteries, the threads that run through it and ultimately pay off in more or less satisfying and unexpected ways (including Harry's relationship with her parents, Ethan's oblique presence, and the role of the Barometer), and the dense emotional centres around which the whole thing is built, especially some of the central relationships, not least Bruno's and Harry's. (Also, I think it's a little piece of novelistic genius to bring back Sweet Autumn Pinkney in the way that she does - a kindness in so many ways.)
This novel has a power and urgency that pulled me through it, and a craft that impressed me. And Siri Hustvedt was already an iconic writer for me. I don't know quite how, or whether, it will linger, but finding out over time promises to be a pleasure.
