This is a haunting beautifully written book exploring life, friendships, relationships. And art. ( )

This book is full of ideas, complex feelings, meaningful descriptions and engaging characters. The narrator, an art historian, befriends an artist and their lives become entangled. Their wives and children become close and they share friendship, tragedy, deception, love, art and literature. This is an absorbing, intricate, beautifully written book. Perfect! ( )

A mesmerising and oddly structured book. The shift in dramatic events is thoroughly unexpected and kind of unrealistic but her writing keeps you hooked (and unexpected it may be, but apparently based loosely on her own experiences with her husband's child). I know this is a divisive book, people either seem to love it or hate it. ( )

Great book about artsy families in New York and their struggles. The life you'd love to have until tragedy strikes.

That rare thing: both emotionally and intellectually engaging.

When I read the first line of this book I was hooked into the story but soon found the first part to be slow reading.

Leo Hertzberg and his wife Erica own a painting by Bill Wechsler of Violet, a model he later falls in love with and leaves his wife Lucille and son Mark to be with. Leo writes about art and he and Bill become friends, Bill and Lucille soon moving into the apartment above Leo and Erica's. Both woman become pregnant at around the same time and forge a slight friendship and both give birth to sons, Erica to Matthew and Lucille to Mark. Lucille has longed for motherhood but does not take to it. Bill tries to be a good father but acknowledges that his leaving, returning and then finally leaving again to be with Violet have a bad effect on young Mark and the shared custody of Mark, seeing him shuttled back and forth across the country between Bill and Lucille does not help. A tragedy causes another separation and the story takes a sinister twist that hints towards murder and corruption.

The book is an odd one, well written and thoughtful but strange and without a really likable character. The first part and the cover blurb led me to expect some sort of intelligent upper middle class romance but later the book took a twist to become in part murder mystery and part recording of the hedonistic 1990's club scene in New York.

I saw one twist coming right before it happened and it was from that point that the book picked up pace and became a lot more gripping. I would recommend the book, dedicated to the author's husband, Paul Auster, I'm just not sure who I would recommend it to. Possibly fans of Anita Shreve might like it if they were looking for something a bit more edgy.

I am interested to read the authors other books but only if I should come across them someplace, not enough to actively go out and search for them. The Blindfold in particular sounds interesting, not least because the main character is named Iris Vegan (Iris a reversal of Siri and Vegan being her mothers maiden surname) ( )

This book has all the elements of good fiction for me - beautiful prose that is not overblown or trying too hard; characters that are believable and flawed; an engrossing plot combined with the minutae of everyday life; and well written descriptions about something important to the story (in this case, art) that are worth the price of admission in themselves.

There are sly digs at the contemporary culture of the time - artists, books and events are thinly veiled under a veneer of fiction, but even I knew what the author was alluding to. You don't need to know any of this to enjoy the book however.

I am glad that I was able to keep myself ignorant of the plot of this book between first hearing about it and eventually reading it. I think it would have lost a lot of its emotional power if I went into it knowing about crucial plot points. Therefore I am not going to use this review to talk about that. Rather, it is a story about families, about relationships, about art and its importance. It is about how love is important, but it can't fix everything. It is about how life is unpredictable, how horrible things happen, and how we can survive them.

A book well worth seeking out. I am now going to try and find Hustvedt's writing about art, I think it will be a good read. ( )

823/.914 21

Dejlig og livsklog roman

engrossing descriptions of artworks (i wanted to see them). intelligent fiction, many subtle vignettes where she noticed small moments in existence. captured aging male voice well (i think?) . found climax a little improbable. eerie second half. ( )

I gave up on this one, which struck me as a pretentious novel narrated by an art history professor about an artist. ( )

Nature of loss through death and deception. ( )

Probably the best piece of fiction I've read all year. I really admired the way she weaved the tale and was impressed with her strategies for creating suspense out of thin air and manipulating the reader. It was terribly engaging. ( )

I picked this up one saturday afternoon when I had the whole weekend to do nothing but sit on my own. I devoured this book and loved every page. I was in the mood for exactly what it was. it is beautifully written. ( )

Did enjoy this book, although it took me a long time to really get into it. ( )

The plot was interesting, and Hustvedt's prose competent. Parts of the story were momentarily moving to me: the dynamic between narrator Leo and his friend Bill's wayward son Mark, especially. Alas, that's the most enthusiastic I can get about this book. Ultimately, what I hated about What I Loved was the clunky overlay of abstruse academic theorizing that I think Hustvedt meant to weave deeply into the narrative, but ends up, for me at least, clouding and burdening it instead. It's very difficult to successfully knit academic intellectual themes and preoccupations into a novel; What I Loved demonstrates for me how that failure makes for a muddled, middling book. ( )

A friend sent me this book a few months ago. I picked it up late last year, but was too distracted to pay proper attention to it at the time. I picked it up again a couple of days ago and was riveted by the story. The writing was simple and elegant, and the story was absolutely devastating. I got to the end of Book One the night before last, and I knew, I just knew, what was going to happen when I turned the page. I tried to put the book down and not start Book Two, but I couldn't help myself. I read the first sentence and then was up most of the night reading more.

One of my favorite bits in the story was when Violet describes what it's like to be young:

"When you're young, I think it's harder to know what you want, how much of others you're willing to take in. When I was living in Paris, I tried on ideas about myself like dresses."

And another bit where Leo describes the impact of viewing Bill's hours and hours of videotapes of children:

Above all, the tapes revealed the furious animation of children, the fact that when conscious they rarely stop moving. A simple walk down the block included waving, hopping, skipping, twirling, and multiple pauses to examine a piece of litter, pet a dog, or jump up and walk along a cement barrier or low fence. In a schoolyard or playground, they jostled, punched, elbowed, kicked, poked, patted, hugged, pinched, tugged, yelled, laughed, chanted, and sang, and while I watched them, I said to myself that growing up really means slowing down.

Even though this story broke my heart, I loved it, and I'll look for more of Hustvedt's work ( )