cestelaine's review against another edition
5.0
Totally enthralling and captivating, I could not put this down. Hustvedt is a superb writer, with narrators that get under your skin.
Told in three parts - from the journals of her younger self, who has taken a year out in New York to write a novel, her older self looking back through the journals, and the novel her twenty year old self writes during that time. It’s an intensely intertwined story, with beautiful threads of identity, maturity, resilience, relationships & gender.
Spanning the full year, Hustvedt takes us on an intriguing meander through her youth, pivotal moments of growth, and reflections of a life well lived. The book is peppered with wonderful insights that I was repeatedly scribbling down. I anticipate revisiting this more than once in the years to come.
Told in three parts - from the journals of her younger self, who has taken a year out in New York to write a novel, her older self looking back through the journals, and the novel her twenty year old self writes during that time. It’s an intensely intertwined story, with beautiful threads of identity, maturity, resilience, relationships & gender.
Spanning the full year, Hustvedt takes us on an intriguing meander through her youth, pivotal moments of growth, and reflections of a life well lived. The book is peppered with wonderful insights that I was repeatedly scribbling down. I anticipate revisiting this more than once in the years to come.
tahinisaltsummer's review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Diverse cast of characters? No
3.75
Never read something quite like this book. I'm blown away
dllh's review against another edition
4.0
Weird and sort of a slow burn at first, but by the end, it was really gripping. Probably not for everybody -- perspective/voice changes, postmoderny stuff. Learned some neat (angrifying) stuff about Duchamp's appropriation of the work of others.
tevreads's review against another edition
5.0
A book that’s been on my shelf for years but that I finally read, and it was exceptional. Blurring fact and fiction with a novel that reads like a memoir, Siri Hustvedt writes with such incredible skill. Each observation, description, political statement or just feeling is so perfectly written. Of an older woman’s reflections and diary entries about trying to write a novel that shares S.H. comically with the Sherlock Holmes-Watson relationship, ‘Memories of the Future’ still holds up after its publication in 2019 as a book that demands reading. One of my instant favourites, I’m looking forward to reading her other works.
he_re's review against another edition
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
5.0
beanjoles's review against another edition
Wasn't in the mood. Might try this another time, but I'd probably do the print or digital version over the audiobook. It felt like a bit of a fever dream and that made it hard to follow verbally.
luciebouchett's review against another edition
4.0
vraiment trop kiffé !!! un peu trop d’envolées lyriques des fois mais la plupart du temps ça marche
e333mily's review against another edition
3.0
This was a lovely book but I found myself forgetting each page as I read it. Like when I read Kundera. I had the vague sense of things happening but I couldn’t recall whether they had happened inside of this book. But the forgetting isn’t a bad thing, it makes the book more immediate, something that confronts you in the present and then dissipates, like a dream.
There were two passages I underlined, two passages I didn’t want to forget:
1. “I was beginning to feel lonely and restless. It’s such an old feeling. I call it “the margins feeling”. Maybe it’s the gulf feeling—a chasm opens up between me and wherever I am—a great divide of difference that keeps growing and can’t be bridged. What is it that separates me from so many people?”
2. “”Don’t shut down. You mustn’t shut down. If you do, don’t you see, if you do it means he wins.” I did not answer her. At the time I felt I had no choice. I had to stiffen every part of myself. I felt that if I didn’t, if I let myself go, if I wasn’t as hard as I could be, I would dissolve into something inchoate and unrecognisable, that I would begin to scream or begin to laugh and never stop.”
There were two passages I underlined, two passages I didn’t want to forget:
1. “I was beginning to feel lonely and restless. It’s such an old feeling. I call it “the margins feeling”. Maybe it’s the gulf feeling—a chasm opens up between me and wherever I am—a great divide of difference that keeps growing and can’t be bridged. What is it that separates me from so many people?”
2. “”Don’t shut down. You mustn’t shut down. If you do, don’t you see, if you do it means he wins.” I did not answer her. At the time I felt I had no choice. I had to stiffen every part of myself. I felt that if I didn’t, if I let myself go, if I wasn’t as hard as I could be, I would dissolve into something inchoate and unrecognisable, that I would begin to scream or begin to laugh and never stop.”
leoniepeonie's review against another edition
4.0
A moving and powerful feminist triumph. At times I felt like the book had been going on for too long, but it's also so utterly perfect in its depth of emotion and sharpness of detail. Loved the way it weaved stories within stories and portrayed so many enduring battlegrounds of womanhood within patriarchy (in ways that were so poignant and accurate it made me grin grimly as much as it made my heart hurt), capturing something bigger than itself with a wisdom that had me teary numerous times.
A massive fanfare of feminism; glorious and strong and bold and loud. Ahhhhhh this book!!!!
A massive fanfare of feminism; glorious and strong and bold and loud. Ahhhhhh this book!!!!
isthar23's review against another edition
4.0
En esta "novela" Siri Hustvedt reconstruye o construye un pasado que quizás fue o quizás pudo ser. Lo que si hace es un ejercicio de metaliteratura, feminismo y filosofía sobre la memoria, sobre lo que recordamos y como el pasado no esta tan lejos del presente. Una lectura exigente pero estimulante e interesante.