The Summer Without Men

My latest for CCLaP!I will admit that I can be very smug. I've been obsessively immersed in books for so long now that I tend to have opinions on everything literary, founded or un-. So of course I had an opinion about Siri Hustvedt, wife of Paul Auster, posed kind of ridiculously in her author photo, with her black turtleneck and piercing stare, writer of--what? I'm not sure what I thought she wrote, mainstream-ish fiction for smart moms, maybe? Stuff like The Time Traveler's Wife or The Memory [...]

When Mia's husband Boris asks for a pause from their 30 year marriage to go frolicking with a French coworker, Mia ups and leaves for her home town to spend the summer there while trying to figure things out. In my first Hustvedt novel I was charmed, entertained and exposed to quite a lot of philosophy, feminism and neuroscience. It was a successful mix. To occupy herself throughout the summer, Mia teaches a poetry workshop for a handful of local girls. She also visits her mother who lives in an [...]

3.5 starsSingle moments: those moments you're having a conversation with someone and you get lost within the jumble of words because your mind wraps itself around only a few phrases, gingerly separating them from the rest. Suddenly, these words hang in moments around you, sticking to your tongue like wet cotton candy, enfolding into word-clouds. Forget the conversation; you only hear those succulent words as they nourish your brain's appetite. While reading this book, I had quite a few of these [...]

4 and 1/2 starsThis is a 'mature' novel that's very aware of itself as being a novel, though the fictional narrator is writing her own story. It's also both more and less than a novel, with more discourses than plot (which the narrator herself points out more than halfway through) and, going against what we've been taught about fiction, it's more telling than showing -- and it all works. As Francine Prose writes in Reading Like a Writer (using an an Alice Munro story as an example) : "There are [...]

The front cover of the advanced reader's copy I hold in my hand depicts a woman, dynamically in flight, yet with an image of dismemberment, as the title takes the place of the woman's trunk. Hustvedt is no stranger to dismemberment, both in fiction and in life. If you peer into her history with novelist husband, Paul Auster, you will note that she has a stepson with a troubled past that features dismemberment, although once removed. In THE BLINDFOLD, the main character, Iris (Siri spelled backwa [...]

Polymathic chicklit with a PhD: something I'd been hoping to find for ten years. Some time ago I had concluded it just didn't get published as there wasn't enough of an audience.I'd never read Siri Hustvedt before, assuming that her books were yet more run-of-the-mill English-language literary fiction. (The rest of her work does still sound that way to me, TBH.) But a few weeks ago I idly clicked on reviews for this book, and among the more negative ones, it was criticised by chicklit readers f [...]

Подходих към книгата съвсем добронамерено, защото "Какво обичах" ми беше харесала (но пък кое ли не изглежда по-добре, когато го четеш по време на деветчасово пътуване с автобус!).От "Лятото без мъже" ми стана някак обидно - не толкова заради баналния сюжет (пренебрегната жена [...]

Muito diferente de Aquilo que Eu Amava, embora trate também de assuntos muito sérios.Aborda ainda - de uma forma encantadora - o mundo de Jane Austen.É uma leitura agradável.

I loved this book as much as all the other books by Siri Hustvedt I've read, and didn't really find the ending all that abrupt, as I've known situations like this in life. The narrator returns to her home town for a summer as a kind of retreat, and engages herself with her mother and her four friends in Rolling Meadows East, and with a group of seven pubescent girls in a poetry class she teaches, and with her next-door neighbor and her two children. The comparisons of the various stages of life [...]

Leyendo El verano sin hombres, uno percibe que Siri Hustvedt es una mujer muy inteligente, una narradora hábil y alguien cuyas inquietudes intelectuales abarcan infinidad de campos. Sin embargo, esa necesidad de abarcar en un solo libro todos los ámbitos del saber redunda en una falta de concreción que perjudica los aspectos sobresalientes del mismo. Entre ellos destaca el vivo y fascinante retrato que hace Hustvedt del universo femenino, en el que trata de englobar, una vez más, al mayor n� [...]

Ce livre c'est une super belle histoire d'amour de soi à soi quand on prend le temps de se regarder et de s'écouter avec douceur. Ca parle aussi d'histoire d'amour de 30 ans (la beauté et la dureté du temps qui passe ensemble), de féminisme, de début de vie de femmes, de fin de vie de femme, de poésie et de folie.

Thirty years on, poet Mia Fredricksen’s husband Boris asks her for a pause in their marriage so he can explore his feelings for his young French lab assistant. First things first: Mia goes crazy and ends up in a mental hospital for a short time. But then she sucks it up and goes back to her Minnesota hometown to teach poetry writing to teen girls for a summer, getting sucked into a bullying drama. She also makes friends with her neighbors and her mother’s cadre of old ladies – I especially [...]

I started this book with the feeling that I would enjoy it a lot. I didn't. It's not a bad novel and I can certainly see how many people enjoy it, but the problem for me was that the characters felt like they weren't fleshed out enough. I didn't get a connection to Mia as the main character. I thought the widows has potential to be interesting, but too little attention was paid to them to make me truly connect. I thought that the young girls in the poetry class were the ones that were characteri [...]

Predictably, given Hustvedt's stature in the literary community, this novel has garnered extremely favourable reviews. Unfortunately, the novel itself does not live up to the hyperbole. The work of some authors you just really want to like. For me, Hustvedt is one of these. She can write well, she occasionally takes 'risks' (or what seem like them), and she is erudite and self-effacing in person (ok, i heard her read and talk once, and i was swooning).The narrator of this novel, Mia Frederickson [...]

Firstly, I should note that a book called "The Summer Without Men" and a cover image of a woman with outstretched arms already seems like a noxious cliché. But if you think this is going to be a story of women affirming each other's womanliness and so forth in a pastoral setting or some such thing, think again.Rather, I got a beautifully vicious, snarky novel by one of America's finest living writers. People are shitty. Old people are shitty, young people are shitty, men are shitty, women are s [...]

Absences that can be felt. Storms that can mirror the rage inside the psyche of a main character after going through a mental breakdown when, after 30 years of marriage, her husband decides he wants a break. The break is French “with limp but shiny brown hair”. Small things, objects that can “come to signify a whole world of feeling”. The unspoken which determines and directs reactions. Power that can be discovered in silences. Nothing that does not speak of real life.Siri Hustvedt’s p [...]

Ξέρεις ότι σου άρεσε ένα βιβλίο άν κατάφερε, χωρίς να το καταλάβεις, να αγγίξει μια ευαίσθητη χορδή σου

Éste es el libro que más he subrayado en la vida. Zurita dijo en el lanzamiento de Black out, de María Moreno “la literatura es siempre autobiográfica porque relata la vida de quien lee” y no puedo parar de pensar en eso. Hace un año este libro no hubiera significado lo mismo. Nada, en realidad. Éste es el último libro que me regaló mi ex y prefiero no encontrarle sentido ni explicaciones a eso. Sólo pensar que es una casualidad bacán, porque el libro es perfecto para acompañarme [...]

"we are all dying one by one"*warning weird seemingly irrelevant review ahead, but it seemed relevant at the time*A long time ago I was a child. Okay not that long ago. I was a weird child, who grew into a weird adult. But back when I was a child once my aunt showed me my IEP. For those of you who didn't spend any time in the special ed room an IEP is an education plan that, well it says what the special ed department intends to do about your particular annoyingness and what they think caused it [...]

I know it's an early call, but this might just be my favourite book of 2011. It is hilarious, intensely moving, beautiful, ugly and honest. It struck home on so many occasions I came out feeling like I'd been run through with hundreds of perfectly realised spears.It surprised how I think about narrative. The effortless way Hustvedt jumps from introspection to narrative, from explication to description, is endlessly inventive and almost always successful. She writes like a novelist should write p [...]

Perdeu um pouco de sua força no final e confesso que não me agradou o desfecho, mas foi um ótimo primeiro contato com Siri e sua mordacidade. Vale muito ser lido.

Originally posted on Snapshot Inkblot WhatnotEven before I had a copy of any book by Siri Hustvedt, I was already keen on liking her prose mainly because Bennard said I would love her. Which, for all I know, is a contrived effort to make Hustvedt my new favorite author--Hustvedt that is wife to Paul Auster, one of Bennard's favorites. Well, planned or not, it appears that he is right. I loved Hustvedt instantly, the love-at-first-few-pages kind.Aside from being my first novel by new favorite aut [...]

Esta novela habla, y abarca, sobre la tradición. Las tradiciones, literarias, históricas, filosóficas, antropológicas y un poco más. Este verano sin hombres va de la vejez, no entendida nunca como decadencia, no, va más bien del transcurrir del tiempo, de aquello que se "mueve" en una dirección. Va del recuerdo, de lo vivido, pero no del olvido, sino más bien de lo comprendido. Lo asimilado.Las relaciones interpersonales tienen su complejidad, sus aristas y sus vacíos. El amor es una ex [...]

Que pena no fuese por el final

Pausa. No existe peor palabra para una mujer casada. Pausa, ¿qué demonios significa eso? ¿Acaso es un te quiero pero? ¿Una promesa implícita de que volveré después de un tiempo? ¿Una forma de dejar una puerta abierta a tu corazón? Es increíble que una simple palabra pueda hacer tanto daño. Como bien dice el inicio de la sinopsis del libro, cuando su marido Boris dijo la dichosa palabra Mia se volvió loca. En todos los sentidos de la palabra. Durante un tiempo no fue la misma mujer. H [...]

No leáis este libro si no habéis leído Persuasión de Jane Austen, porque spoilers

4.5 stars - I enjoyed myself so much while reading this. Another great novel by Siri Hustvedt and maybe even the one I'd recommend to pick up first.

libro da spiaggiaUn libro in regalo fa sempre tenerezza. Poi anche breve. Me lo leggo subito. L'argomento, devo ammetterlo, mi è sembrato di primo acchito il solito, un po' trito, abbandono della “vecchia” (si fa per dire!) moglie trentennale, (nel senso degli anni di matrimonio!) da parte del marito sull'orlo dell'andropausa per la collega indovinate un po'? giovane, fresca, e ben carrozzata. Si è preso una Pausa, insomma, mentre la moglie per uscire dal momento inziale di pazzia, si ripr [...]

Actual rating 4.5Very intelligent.So very intelligent in fact, I wasn't sure in the beginning if I would get it or if it would be too much hard work.Rest assured, I did, and it was brilliant.My first try at Siri Hustvedt - spotted it on a libraryshelf and got it because I had seen it on bookstagram just the day before.Something just has to be said for curiously entering a novel without knowing anything about it.The narrator, Mia, was distinctly different to other narrators I've encountered, as s [...]

to be honest this book was kind of weird and inconsistent and also v. different in tone from hustvedt's other work (tempted to call this her orlando in a way), but i just liked reading about the secret amusements a lot