What I Loved : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Wow!
Review: This is the first novel i have read of Siri Hustvedt and all i can say is wow! This is one of the best novels ive ever read! Even better than Girl With Pearl Earring! What i loved most was Hustvedt's detail and attention whilst describing Bill's paintings! Not to mention the beautifully written personality's and relationships of the characters,each different and unique, so much so you are absorbed completely! To sum the book up in two words; Simply Beautiful! Go out and read right now! You wont forget it!

Rating:
Summary: What I Didn't Love
Review: What I didn't love was that I wanted to read the book but two "reviewers" who were unhappy with it wanted to ruin it for the rest of us by giving away important details. You don't like it; we understand. But don't be petty and mean about it. Many people loved it--give the rest of us a chance!

Rating:
Summary: A Beatifully Written Book Of Friendship and Loss
Review: WHAT I LOVED is the story of two friends, who spark a lifelong friendship over a painting. Leo Hertzberg, an art historian, visits a SoHo gallery and is captivated by a large portrait of a reclining woman - one of a series of portraits depicting the same model in various stages of emaciation and obesity. He purchases the painting, and arranges for a meeting with the artist, Bill Wechsler, who ruefully admits that Hertzberg is the first person to have bought one of his paintings. The two hit it off immediately, and introduce their wives: Leo's wife Erica, a grad student eleven years his junior, and Bill's wife Lucille, an oddly stiff and unhappy poetess. At first, the women are a little reserved, but when both wives fall pregnant within months of each other, their friendship solidifies in a frenzy of baby shopping and tummy-stroking and mom-to-be fussing. Erica gives birth to Matthew, and Lucille gives birth to Mark; the Wechslers now live in the apartment above the Hertzbergs (which, I guess, is the closest equivalent to next-door-neighbors, in New York). Everything is, as they say, just peachy.

But every peach has an ugly, hard, tooth-jarring pit, and it soon becomes clear that the Wechslers' marriage is foundering. Lucille is dissatisfied with Bill and seemingly indifferent to Mark; from their downstairs apartment, Leo and Erica can hear the fights. Bill moves out and takes up residence in his studio, finding comfort in the arms of Violet, his artist's model and true love. When Lucille moves out West, Bill and Violet take up residence in the apartment once again, attempting to raise Mark together. Sadly, as often happens, Mark becomes a pawn in a turf war between his divorced parents, and ends up being shuttled back and forth across the country like so much chopped liver. Matt and Mark become close friends, and the bond between the boys is, the parents hope, a source of comfort and solidarity for Matt. Bill is happier with Violet than he's ever been with Lucille, and they dare to hope that the worst is behind them.

Of course, the worst is yet to come. The first sentence of Book Two is like a punch in the gut, reminding the gullible reader that life is always waiting to yank the rug out from under anybody who looks too contented. Both sets of parents are doomed to lose their children, one in an inexplicable, senseless accident, and one in a slow and insidious loss stretching over years. Many marriages are unable to weather the loss of a child, and Bill and Leo find their relationships with their wives strained to breaking by their grief. Battered by their disappointments and hardships, the men turn to their long-lasting friendship for solace, growing old and slow in a world that seems hell-bent on methodically stripping away everything that is dear to them.

Beautifully written, Siri Hustvedt's delicate prose sensitively and knowingly handles the rocky terrain of friendships between couples, with all the sexual tension, divided loyalties, and jealousy that inevitably set in. The dialogue is believable and well-done, convincingly rendering the characters as artsy academics: again and again, the characters turn to their fields of study to find meaning in events, overlaying their precious theories like ill-fitting grids across reality. The tragedies that tear Leo and Bill's lives apart are nothing unusual; everybody knows somebody who's suffered the same fate, or worse, and that's what makes the characters so sympathetic and realistic.

Hustvedt lets the reins slip from her fingers a bit toward the end, when a series of improbable events masterminded by a cartoonish villain abruptly shift the plot into surreal murder-mystery territory, but the ache and the loss are real enough, and partially rescue the story. If anything, Hustvedt is a little too restrained and sensitive in her portrayals of grief; her characters choke back their sorrow with a self-control that recalls the stereotypical emotionally constipated academic. Nevertheless, WHAT I LOVED is a gripping, wonderfully told examination of the complicated and unarticulated bonds of friendship, and the courage it takes to love others in the certain knowledge of death and loss. You'll enjoy this book. Another Amazon quick pick you'll enjoy is THE LOSERS' CLUB by Richard Perez, a unique and very engaging, rather obscure little novel. I pick up a used copy and truly love this book.