Rating: 
Summary: I am in the minority but ...
Review: I found it very difficult to read. The first 100 pages left me cold. It then peaked occasionally ... but it is such a pretentious book! And the complicated family set-up was so ridiculous. At the end, poor Leo. Would he really go through all that for his adolescent 'charge'? I think not.
All my book club agreed .. but then we are English... sorry.
Rating: 
Summary: Gorgeously written and a really accomplished piece of work
Review: I found the first seventy pages or so, of this story a little slow and hard going. And I kept wondering where this novel is heading, the descriptions of the art installations and paintings where a little long and convoluted. All of a sudden, however, the story just seemed to elevate and wow! I couldn't put it down. Hustveldt is an absolutely gorgeous writer - from her existential philosophizing to her detailed descriptions of the New York art world, I found her work to be so rich in character and detail. This is a book that presents lots of issues - family relationships, teenage rebellion, dysfunctional societies, and the pressure that's put upon people to conform to what they see as societies standards. This book really takes two readings because there's so much rich historical and artistic detail that one doesn't capture on first reading. All five of the main protagonists - Leo, Mark, Bill, Erica and Violet are superbly drawn and very real. And I found myself getting so frustrated at Bill and Violet for the way they handled Mark; I think this was a situation where tough love and firm ultimatums would have been far more effective. The central theme of how much can we really know about another person is beautifully expressed by the novel's seamless movement between the main characters' inner and outer worlds - from the deeply private to the public, from physical infirmity to cultural illness. I agree with the blurb of this novel. What I Loved is most definitely part domestic drama and also part psychological thriller - a beautifully written exploration of love, loss and betrayal. A tale of an ordinary man who leads an ordinary life, and is drastically trying to make sense of the world. I always admire writers who can write in first person with a different gender and I am anxiously looking forward to reading much more of Siri Hustveldt work. Michael
Rating:
Summary: Very sad book
Review: I have found this book really wonderfully written, the style is very beautifull. But the book brought me into a very deep depression!!! Everything in this novel is completely hopeless!! The book gives one a feeling that life is ONLY sad: children die or go wrong way in their lives, adults also die, divorce, separate, become un-happy. There is not even one positive event happening in this book!!!! I am really wondering what drives the author to write such a book. Is this an expression of Siri Hustvedt's own un-happiness?.. After reading this book (and after reading a lot of other books from modern literature) I decided to stop reading modern literature at all, and to read only books on history: those will al least give knowledge and information about our past. But the books like "What I loved" give no information, but only disturb one's psychological status and bring one to a very bad mood.
Rating: 
Summary: what i missed
Review: i really enjoyed the first half of this book. i found the characters interesting and i loved the new york references (i'm a native) but after matt's death, when leo got more involved with mark it turned into a murky, muddled mess. the seedy antics went a little too far, with leo on a grand chase. it really didn't make sense. i missed what could have been a great second half.
Rating: 
Summary: Well-written, intelligent and surprising
Review: I think the main appeal of Siri Hustvedt's novel lies in the fact that its protagonists, at least the bigger part of them, are better educated than the average reader. I still don't know anything aobut art or art history, but how Leo and Bill think and talk about art brought some insight to me, and it prompted me do have a look at some of the artists described in there. We're reading about full-fleshed characters who have the ability to constantly surprise us because there is always something we have not yet figured out about them. This is a very good read, not least because Siri Hustvedt knows about the use of language and the art of writing.
Rating:
Summary: A Disappointment
Review: I was so disappointed by this book.
The enthusiastic reviews I read made me believe this book was going to be something other than it was. In fact, the book itself tried to accomplish a similar sleight-of-hand. It sells itself -- both physically and in terms of the reviews but also in its outset -- as a traditional modern novel about the relationships between a group of adult friends. Hustvedt abandons this thread about halfway through the novel, choosing instead to turn it into a surreal detective story that's far too literally about investigation, absence and reality for my taste. It's two books mashed into one and unfortunately neither is successful. I've given it two stars because either of the books this one could have been would have been great; the writing is sharp and the characterizations vivid (though Bill I found one-note). I fear readers will be disappointed if they head into this work expecting a riveting modern novel; expect instead erudition and gamesmanship and the hollow feeling that comes at the end of the long, unfulfilling exercise of reading this book.
Rating:
Summary: touching to tabloid
Review: I'm baffled by the reviews of this book. The first part was in fact touching, but then...
But then the second half is barely a notch above Law & Order. It's a veiled (very thinly) retelling of the New York "Clubland Murders" from the late 90's. See the book/film "Party Monster." I guess I just found that to distracting to become invested in the second half. It was just wierd to have this go from touching to tabloid. Does Michael Alig get royalties? And what's up with the American Psycho reference, and calling it "Psycho Land."
Rating:
Summary: Haunting
Review: In the past three weeks, I've read all three of Hustvedt's novels (in reverse order of when they were written). Each time I've been deeply impressed. I was first a fan of Paul Auster, and kept seeing "people who bought X by Paul Auster also bought Y by Siri Hustvedt," so I gave her a shot, not knowing that they were married until I got the book in my hot little hands and read the jacket. What a vivid, vital novel! Of the three she has penned, it is my favorite, if only for the truly haunting characters and amazingly detailed and tactile descriptions of art work. After finishing "What I Loved," I found myself continually "remembering" Bill, one of the main characters. I still think of him, a tragic and charasmatic character illustrated so sensitively and realistically I feel I know him or want to know him. I wish I could refrain from drawing parallels to Auster's work, but there are similarities: the story centers around writers, professors, and artists and questions of representation and narrative in art and writing; there is a writer-as-detective subplot, and a dark underrent reminiscent of pulpy Hammett or Chandler. These elements turn a telling and touching story of the complexities of family and loss into a postmodern novel that still shows empathy towards its protagonists. A complex page-turner with compelling characters, this one is not to be missed!
Rating:
Summary: Almost Perfext
Review: It is a rare treat indeed to find a book which engages so completely both the heart and the mind. Hutsvedt adeptly uses the sometimes literally cut throat New York art, intellectual & nightclubbing worlds to explore themes of duality, sorrow, loss, betrayal and the exquisite pain of loving. Her triumph rests on her abilitly to portray her characters so three dimensionally as to lend real emotional weight to her themes. One cannot resist being drawn into the fold of the two families which are at the heart of the novel - so sympathetic and intelligent do they appear and so fascinating their intellectual lives that the temptation is to want to enter their world completely. Particualarly unique and affecting is her tender exploration of sorrow and the ways in which it distorts and refracts our lives through it's deadly prism. My sole criticism lies in her rendering of the New York 'rave' scene which I think is a disappointingly sketchy affair compared to the way she treats the art & scholarly worlds with such sharpness. She hinges the last part of the book and the demise of her characters around a scene she villifies as violent, drugged and dark. In reality, as a participant in the 'rave' scene I know it to be largely positive community with the usual pockets of negativity known to every social milieu. I found her treatment of this theme to be rather reactive and fearful. I was utterly engaged by this book whose elegant and economical simplcity of prose betrays the deep complexity that Hutsvedt creates. My favourite book of the year.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: Siri Hustvedt gets better with every book. She spent six years on What I Loved and it was time well spent. This is a book of great nuance and complexity, balanced beautifully, plotted beautifully, with characters that are both well-developed and open-ended. One of Hustvedt's interests is ambiguity. She studies how reality is a slippery thing, how you think you know about something or someone but you don't; you've only projected, and things are always more complicated than you expected. In a Hustvedt book, life is not predictable, and you are always surprised. This alone would make her books interesting, but she also has the plotting skill of a mystery writer, so these literary, theoretical creations, illustrations of a point (or several points), are actually page-turners. Hustvedt is a blast to read. She is so much fun. On top of it all, her point of view is so gentle, so compassionate but quietly forceful, that spending an hour with one of her books, especially What I Loved, is like spending an hour with a very wise friend. It's a real treat. I happen to enjoy her take on the art world, because no writer understands the art world like Hustvedt, and I happen to be a painter. She understands how artists think, how artists create, and she understands the mechanics and politics of the art world, especially the New York art scene, as though she were a visual artist in the thick of it. Now Hustvedt is an art historian/critic; you'll see her excellent articles in the British magazine, Modern Painters. But not all art historians understand art or how art is made from an artist's point of view and usually they get it a little wrong. Hustvedt is the only fiction writer I have ever read who really gets it about art, who hits the nail on the head. And she understands the politics and perversities of the art world, but never loses sight of the purity of making art, never gets cynical. If you're an artist, you have to read her. She stimulates your ideas, makes you think, makes you question your assumptions, and she makes you want to make art and push what you'd been doing just a little farther. I might have to wait another six years for the next Hustvedt to come out. All I can say is, I can't wait.
| 
