What I Loved Book + PRICE WATCH * Amazon pricing is not included in price watch

What I Loved Book

What I Loved is a deeply touching elegiac novel that mourns for the New York artistic life, which was of a time but now has gone--by extension, it is about all losses swept away by mischance and time. Half-blind and alone, Leo tells us of marriage and friendship, and makes the sheer fragility of what seemed forever not only his subject, but perhaps the only subject worth considering. Scholars Leo and his wife Erica admire, and befriend, artist Bill and his first and second wives--their respective sons Matthew and Mark grow up together until the first of a series of tragedies strikes. And things get gradually worse from then on, both because terrible things happen and because people do not get over them. 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 KaveneyRead More

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  • Foyles

    LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION'Defiantly complex and frequently dazzling' Sunday Times'Siri Hustvedt's most ambitious, most rewarding novel. It mesmerises, arouses, disturbs' Salman Rushdie'Superb . . . What I Loved is a rare thing, a page turner written at full intellectual stretch, serious but witty, large-minded and morally engaged' New York Times Book Review'A love story with the grip and suspense of a thriller' Times Literary SupplementIn 1975 art historian Leo Hertzberg discovers an extraordinary painting by an unknown artist in a New York gallery. He buys the work, tracks down its creator, Bill Wechsler, and the two men embark on a life-long friendship. This is the story of their intense and troubled relationship, of the women in their lives and their work, of art and hysteria, love and seduction and their sons - born the same year but whose lives take very different paths.'A big, wide, sensuous novel - clever, sinister, yet attractively real' GuardianPRAISE FOR SIRI HUSTVEDT:'Hustvedt is that rare artist, a writer of high intelligence, profound sensuality and a less easily definable capacity for which the only word I can find is wisdom' Salman Rushdie'One of our finest novelists' Oliver Sacks'Reading a Hustvedt novel is like consuming the best of David Lynch' Financial Times'Few contemporary writers are as satisfying and stimulating to read as Siri Hustvedt' Washington Post'A 21st-century Virginia Woolf'Literary Review

  • Play

    This is the story of two men who first become friends in 1970s New York of the women in their lives and of their sons born the same year. Both Leo Hertzberg an art historian and Bill Weschler a painter are cultured decent men but neither is equipped to deal with what happens to their children -- Leo's son drowns when he's 12 while Bill's son Mark grows up to be a delinquent and the acolyte of a sinister guru-like artist who spawns murder in his wake. Spanning the hedonism of the eighties and the chill-out nineties this multi-layered novel combines a plot of mounting menace with a deeply moving account of familial relationships and a superbly observed portrait of an artist set against the backdrop of a society reaching new depths of depravity in its frenetic quest for the next fashion drug and thrill.

  • Blackwell

    Over 250,000 copies sold In 1975 art historian Leo Hertzberg discovers an extraordinary painting by an unknown artist in a New York gallery. He buys the work, tracks down its creator, Bill Weschler, and the two men embark on a life-long friendship.

  • BookDepository

    What I Loved : Paperback : Hodder & Stoughton : 9780340682388 : : 28 Jan 2015 : The international phenomenon by one of America's most acclaimed and beloved writers, longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction

  • Waterstones

    The must-read novel of 2003 - a state of the nation, break your heart, make you think novel from an American female novelist in a league of her own

  • 0340682388
  • 9780340682388
  • Siri Hustvedt
  • 4 August 2003
  • Sceptre
  • Paperback (Book)
  • 384
  • New edition
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