Play Book Tag discussion

What I Loved by Siri Hustvedt - 5 stars - My Review

PBT Comments: Content warnings: (view spoiler)[Death of a child, psychopathic behavior, harm to animals (descriptions of events that occur offstage.) (hide spoiler)]

“The recollections of an older man are different from those of a young man. What seemed vital at forty may lose its significance at seventy. We manufacture stories, after all, from the fleeting sensory material that bombards us at every instant, a fragmented series of pictures, conversations, odors, and the touch of things and people. We delete most of it to live with some semblance of order, and the reshuffling of memory goes on until we die.“

Leo Hertzberg is a professor of art history living in New York with his wife Erica, and son Matthew. Experimental artist Bill Weschler, his wife, Lucille, and their son, Mark, move into the apartment upstairs. Bill and Lucille divorce, and Bill marries his muse, Violet. Each character is an artist, academic, or writer. It begins in 1975 and covers a period of approximately twenty-five years. It is a psychological character study of a small number of people – primarily Leo, Bill, Mark, and Violet – revolving around the New York art scene. It is a book to be experienced, as a plot summary will not do it justice.

The story is told by Leo, looking back on what happened in the lives of these two families. It takes time to set the stage, but once everything is in place, it is an intriguing story that is hard to put down. The characters are strikingly well-drawn. The writing is erudite and expressive. The interactions among the characters are intense. I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of the artistic processes. It is a story of relationships, friendship, grief, art, narcissism, and wishful thinking. It is brilliant. I am adding it to my list of favorites.

“But spectacular lies don’t need to be perfect. They rely less on the liar’s skill than on the listener’s expectations and wishes.”