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De Vlammende Wereld (2014)

by Siri Hustvedt(Favorite Author)

3.64 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

9023482794 (ISBN13: 9789023482796)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

De Bezige Bij

review 1: Intellectually challenging, built on the shifting sands of postmodern identity. Whose voice are we hearing, whose art are we seeing? Hustvedt explores circles of perception and understanding, giving points of view that range from a New Age healer to a sophisticated academic scholar, all looking at the center of attention, artist Harriet Burden, whose complaint is that she and her work did not get the attention they deserved. So in the book, they do. Hustvedt zooms in and out of Harriet's world through the prism of her journal writing and essays by others around her, giving a fractured, light-splintered look at her. The underlying question seems to be whether we can ever know anyone at all? Do we not see what we want to in others, to the extent that the looking (outward) is... more inseparable from the seeing (inward)? Hustvedt throws mighty chunks of philosophy and intellectual analysis at the reader, and then footnotes it, which is vaguely insulting (if we want to know more about Kierkegaard, we know how to look it up). But I am terrifically impressed with her writing and will be looking for more of her work, both fiction and non.
review 2: This book was a major accomplishment, and I wonder if its feminist main character stopped it being shortlisted for the Booker as it should have been. The book itself reflects the main character's dilemma: who will listen to an erudite, political polymath, if she's a woman? The structure is original, from many, repeating, points of view, including some fairly turgid post structuralist art theorising. The main character loves men at the same time as she is damaged by and rails against the male art establishment. A character who is a lover of men, who is a loving mother, wife, friend but recognises the damage done to her by he male art establishment but finds it more difficult to recognise the damage done by individual men, including her husband, who support and further that establishment, which, in the end, is held up by individuals. She is a vulnerable and intensely likeable character, as are her children and new lover and it's painful to witness her destruction. There are many clever ideas, such as her experience of changing as she imagines her art being seen as male. The theme of wanting her art/self to be seen from a different point of view is reflected in the fact that we see her from multiple viewpoints in different chapters, and have to form a picture of her from multiple and sometimes contradictory viewpoints. She herself 'writes' some of the chapters from different personas, including males one. Overall a very emotionally and intellecually satisfying book. less

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