El prestigioso escritor Salman Rushdie ha dicho de esta novela que " fascina, apasiona e inquieta. Hustvedt is a singular artist, a gifted writer of considerable intelligence, profound sensuality and a quality difficult to define for which I can only think one word: wisdom. "Not as enthusiastic as Rushdie himself, Hustvedt's novel is, above all, surprising, and beyond this feature, we could say that the word that best defines it is" troubling. "This does not preclude its sometimes reading progress with some difficulty, because it Hustvedt's prose too dense at times, ups and downs and at a rate which, fortunately is in crescendo as we go along the pages. The writer is a great creative characters. There are some echoes austerianos in these tormented characters with more specific concerns that we love the fans of Auster. In fact, reading this novel right after the previously outlined, Leviathan, I could not find certain similarities between them. In what concerns us, the narrative voice lies with a male character, Leo Hertzberg, an art teacher who will bring a strong friendship with a budding artist named Bill Wechsler. They live in a way similar stocks. Married with two beautiful girls, Erica and Lucille, the two will become pregnant and give birth almost simultaneously. The relationship between the four seems to increasingly take hold, although the author introduces the beginnings of a third female character, Violet, who have a definite presence from the second part of the novel.
The book is thus divided into three parts. The division between the first two is given by a tragic event unexpectedly hitting the peaceful life of this little circle of New York, and will cause profound changes in the trajectory of each one of them. But the most fascinating of the book, from my point of view, is hidden in a page between the second and third, when something dark and strange begins to stalk the actors, at first diffusely, to absorb the growing reader hasta conferir a la novela ese carácter de "inquietante" que mencioné más arriba.
Me gusta la forma de escribir de Hustvedt, aunque sus descripciones son quizás demasiado prolijas en algunos momentos. En general la primera parte del libro se hace algo lenta y pesada, pero como ya adelanté, el ritmo va acelerándose y los acontecimientos se van precipitando a medida que avanzamos en su lectura. Esto, unido a unos personajes bien construidos y muy interesantes, dotan al libro de algo especial que sin duda acaba acaparando -y de forma casi enfermiza- la atención del lector.
El mundo del arte, con sus excentricidades y sus abusos, pero también con la fuerza expresiva que le caracteriza, como fuente de emotions in the viewer, is the backdrop of the novel. Serve this snippet as shown:
"Whenever an artist dies, his work begins to slowly replace the body, thus becoming his replacement in this corporeal world. This is a process, I suppose, inevitable. In passing from one generation to another, certain useful objects such as chairs or plates, may seem temporarily infused with the spirit of their former owners, but this condition fairly quickly succumbs to their pragmatic functions. Art, for their intrinsic usefulness, is reluctant to be incorporated into everyday life, and when it is minimally powerful, seems to encourage the life of the person that created it. "
A novel that also explores significant aspects of human psychology, such as grief and sense of loss at the death of a loved one, the difficulty of relationships, the impossibility of know all the way to the other, no matter how close they seem to us, or personality disorders that can lead to a path of no return. This book is quite ambitious in its plot, but which achieves a more than successful with expectations. And, although sometimes can be tiring a bit, does not disappoint at all. Siri Hustvedt has insisted time and again that they do not want to be known as the wife of Paul Auster, but on merit. If we stay in this way, no doubt you would succeed, if not already done so.
0 comments:
Post a Comment