Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... The Blindfold (original 1992; edition 1994)by Siri Hustvedt
Work InformationThe Blindfold by Siri Hustvedt (1992)
Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Super smart and pretty engaging. Probably not everybody's cup of tea. ( ) An experimental and I have to think, autobiographical novel that was at once self-deprecatory and congratulatory. It says look how quirky, interesting and downright weird my life is, but oh see how much of that is my fault. But not really. Iris/Siri’s character is really hard to grasp. Most of that is the oblique prose and the fact that she’s always reacting to something or someone. She asserts things but only in response to provocation. Her personality is a mirror that reflects what people want. The only exception appears to be Stephen, but since he seems so conflicted about his relationship with Iris, maybe his desire to get away from her was what Iris really saw and then just gave him reasons. The continuity is really weird and not easy to follow and I like books that play with time. The whole headache/hospital episode was hard to slot and seemed needlessly obscure, as did the rest of the timeline. This was my second book by Hustvedt and I don’t see myself tempted by her work again. An intense, visceral debut novel telling a story of a literature student in New York in search of her identity. The book takes the form of a confessional monologue. The first three chapters are episodic, self contained and only tenuously linked by the narrative voice. The long fourth and final chapter puts them in context and introduces a darker psychological element. The tone throughout is cool, and the characters she meets are enigmatic and often slightly menacing. A gripping book, but a difficult one to sum up. Troubled world and troubled people in stories thereof. I did not get as much out of the book as I hoped for, but since this is Hustvedt's first work, I forgive the intensity and the weirdness, which seems rather artificial at times. Augmented weirdness and no capacity to deal with it, somehow. This may be due to autobiographical nature of the work and I certainly hope Hustvedt managed to expell some of the difficult, harming aspects from her life through this book. This was Siri Histvedt's first novel. It is in no way a brilliant book, like most of her more recent novels and collections, but it is readable mostly from a perspective of curiosity about the writer. The Blindfold is more like a series of short stories intervowen with a main character, who must be very closely related to the writer herself. I suspect strong autobiograhical segments here, because there are characters and story lines that make little sense if they didn't derive from lived experiences. Three of the stories have an intriguing premise: the writer who wants help with animating objects left by a dead girl, the power struggle among three long term patients in a hospital; and the female student who tests behaving like a man. Unfortunately, none of the stories are perfect and I am left a bit disappointed in all three of them. If you haven't read Siri Hustvedt before, don't start with the Blindfold. If you have read other books by her, you may also somewhat enjoy The Blindfold. no reviews | add a review
Is abridged in
From the author of The Blazing World, "a work of dizzying intensity...eloquent and vivid" (Don DeLillo), about a young Midwestern woman who finds herself entangled in intense circumstances--physical, cerebral, and existential--when she moves to New York City. Iris Vegan, a young, impoverished graduate student from the Midwest, finds herself entangled with four powerful but threatening characters as she tries to adjust to life in New York City. Mr. Morning, an inscrutable urban recluse, employs Iris to tape-record verbal descriptions of objects that belonged to a murder victim. George, a photographer, takes an eerie portrait of Iris, which then acquires a strong life of its own, appearing and disappearing without warning around the city. After a series of blinding migraines, Iris ends up in a hospital room with Mrs. O., a woman who has lost her mind and memory to a stroke, but who nevertheless retains both the strength and energy to torment her fellow patient. And finally, there is Professor Rose, Iris's teacher and eventually her lover. While working with him on the translation of a German novella called The Brutal Boy, she discovers in its protagonist, Klaus, a vehicle for her own transformation and ventures out into the city again--this time dressed as a man. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813Literature English (North America) American fictionLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |