Some compelling essays

books:

	• Yonder Siri Hustvedt Henry Holt and Co., 1998 - 160 pages average customer review:based on 1 review view larger image
	for more information click here

Some compelling essays

Considering the attention and praise Siri Hustvedt's novels have received, I was surprised that this book was published almost invisibly a year ago. I just discovered Yonder a few weeks ago (mid-1999) and haven't found any reviews of it outside of the trades -- which is unfortunate, since I'm pretty sure that fans of her novels (as well as Auster's novels) would enjoy these essays if they knew the book existed at all. Yonder's a quick but memorable read -- Hustvedt's essays focus on the same preoccupations as her novels: the parallel worlds of language and experience; defining self and landscape through absence and presence; etc. Best are the title essay and the other personal/autobiographical essays -- the literary essays (on Dickens and Fitzgerald) are less compelling but still have some memorable parts. I enjoyed Yonder as much as I did The Blindfold, both for its clear style and its ideas. At its best, the essays in Yonder are freed from the constraints of fiction, presenting compelling ideas and resonant images in a compact, finely made form.

for more information click here

Sparkling essays on a variety of subjects--literature, art, popular culture, autobiography--by a renowned young American novelist.

In her brilliant and daring novels The Blindfold and The Enchantment of Lily Dahl, Siri Hustvedt has won critical acclaim and a rapidly expanding international audience. But she is also a wide-ranging essayist and critic, frequently reexamining in her fascinating nonfiction many of the central leitmotifs of her fiction.

The six pieces in Yonder, Hustvedt's first book of essays, are all meditations on the complex relationship between art and the world. They include a personal essay on memory and place, which investigates the images we retain from our lives, the lives of others in the world, and the lives of characters in books. In "Vermeer's Annunciation," Hustvedt gives an entirely original interpretation of the Vermeer painting Woman with a Pearl Necklace. In "Ghosts at the Table," she examines the essence of still life as a genre in painting from Cotan and Chardin to Philip Guston. Other essays include a profound piece about Dickens, a reassessment of The Great Gatsby, and a witty and provocative assault on contemporary pieties entitled "A Plea for Eros."

for more information click here

hot

not?

What's your opinion?

Write a review and share your thoughts!

search for books
yonder

Impressum / about us