What I Loved (Hardcover)

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 'Hustvedt writes with chilling intensity, and with an intimate knowledge of New York.' -- Kate Chisholm, Telegraph 20030111 'A gripping intellectual read' -- Hugo Barnacle, New Statesman 20030113 '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 20030111 '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 20030111 'Defiantly complex and frequently dazzling ... it teases and taxes its reader with problems of meaning and personal identity on almost every page ... With what seems like obvious enjoyment, [Hustvedt] creates an oeuvre for Bill. His range of work deepens and changes direction over time, leaving us with a real sense of the magpie tendencies of the creative mind, and exists against a convincing and often amusing rendering of the New York art scene in the 1970s and 1980s. But, like the art she describes, Hustvedt's novel also metamorphoses: into the moving story of the grief and disarray that follow a family loss; into a grippingly madcap thriller ... and into a peculiarly obsessional meditation on the nature of the boundaries between human beings and the power - or lack of power - that art and its interpretation has to mediate and elide them. The narrative throbs with the energy of repeated and refined ideas, with the tension between interior and exterior lives, with a series of mirror images and doubles that exist in an elegant symmetry, and with sudden changes in pace and subject matter that bring to it an almost shape-shifting quality ... Hustvedt's special skill (and the talent that makes this a truly memorable novel) is that we never escape the feeling that her intellectual hoops are being jumped through by real people. In that, she has pulled off a trick far more difficult than many contemporary novels admit: she has created a conceptually exciting work that demands we think, but which still allows us room to feel.' -- Alex Clark, Sunday Times 20030111 'Apart from her completely riveting plot and memorable characterisation, her novel is fascinating for her insights into the mechanics of the art world and the way artists disport themselves as well as their philosophies. The cool, clean lines of her prose are a disciplined delight. Her great skill though lies in the unravelling of her charcters who react to stress and sadness in different and credible ways. Above all, the ultimate joy of this book is the discovery of a fresh and original new talent.' -- Madeleine Keane, Sunday Independent 20030126 'Hustvedt incorporates questions of aesthetics and a profound consideration of artistic imperatives into her study of two full and often dramatic lives and a deeply satisfying friendship ... addictive' -- Nina Caplan, Metro London 20030116 'With What I Loved, the novelist confronts the beauty and terror of an era.' -- Journal du dimanche 20030119 'Essential and intangible things escape from this dense, sensual and melancholy novel: passion, desire! friendship, schizophrenia, lies and treachery.' -- Le Figaro 20030123 'It is a great, ambitious work, bith a novel of ideas and a novel of characters, in which not a single line seems extraneous. Consummately intellectual, and exploring themes as disparate as mental illness, eating disorders, erotica, drugs, murder and modern art, it is also intensely - at times achingly - moving... expertly executed, with none of the mawkishness that tends to afflict so much contemporary writing. The first part of the book is slow-moving and richly atmospheric.' -- Jennifer O'Connell, Sunday Business Post 20030126 'What I Loved is a book of rare density, that ones loves unconditionally.' -- Elle 20030127 'What I Loved - an energetic, rich novel where ideas and theses are interwoven amongst the destinies of people who are being slowly crushed by life.' -- L'Express 20030109 'If her novelistic universe has grown in density and weight, her writing has not lost its truthfulness, sensitivity, her subtle perception of imaginary dimensions!the dominant feeling when one closes this book is one of great serenity.' -- Marie-Claire 20030201 'At the same time as dealing with cerebral considerations, Siri Hustvedt's novel is anchored in a very strong reality.' -- Presse Regionale 20030112 'Siri Hustvedt is a magnificent writer.' -- Paris Vogue 20030201 'Siri Hustvedt.., subtly expresses all the ambiguity of an emotion that is at once the origin and symptom of our personal perversities.' -- Les Inrockuptibles 20030122 'The narrative throbs with the energy of repeated and refined ideas, with the tension between interior and exterior lives, with a series of mirror images and doubles that exist in an elegant symmetry, and with sudden changes in pace and subject matter that bring to it an almost shape-shifting quality... [Hustvedt] has created a conceptually exciting work that demands we think, but which still allows us room to feel.' -- Alex Clark, Sunday Times 20030202 'Hustvedt is a consummate storyteller who is very much connected to desires and physicality, here revealing a greatly compassionate yet strictly unsentimental understanding of human relations. [She] writes with impressive lucidity.' -- The List, Glasgow 20030116 'A novel of such complexity and power that when you get to the end of it you feel the process of deciphering has only just begun.' -- Noonie Minogue, Times Literary Supplement 20030207 'After a slow but engrossing start... WHAT I LOVED becomes a page-turning psychological thriller... seductive and threatening.' -- Carole Morin, Scotland on Sunday 20030202 'A New York novel of real class - one of the best books of 2003... so far.' -- Sunday Herald 20030202 'Hustvedt is a serious, ambitious writer whose novels are intelligent, involving and engrossingly textured, like the highest class of thrillers.' -- Michael Thompson-Noel, Financial Times 20030202 'A cool, intriguing book.' -- Arminta Wallace, Irish Times 20030201 'Hustvedt's unshowy prose will guide you through a maze of thought-provoking ideas' -- Literary Review 20030601 '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 '[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 '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 deserv...

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