Reviews

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 apartment building for senior citizens, and meets her mother's friends. The descriptions of old age in this book is both raw and touching. It was very well done and something that gives the book a dept and strength of narrative that makes it really good. Mia also gets to know her next door neighbor - a young mother struggling to care for a toddler (Flora) and a baby (Simon) while her husband is working. And there we have it. An all female cast of characters (except baby Simon), representing all ages, from toddler to elderly.

Maleness is not completely absent, though. Boris is often on Mia's mind (and there are a few other males circling the outskirts of the story). When he first announced he wanted a pause she had a mental breakdown, later she's filled with anger and criticism towards him, and later still she seems to be thoughtful and uncertain about what she feels and wants. Who are we really, underneath the roles of mother, wife, crone? And who do we want to be, if we could throw away those roles? This book is more about identity and going through different phases of life than just bashing away at male dominance - although feminism is also an important theme throughout. In fact, Hustvedt's analysis of injustice has a humor, colorfulness and preciseness to it that reminded me a lot of Margaret Atwood.

Hustvedt doesn't tell a strictly chronological story. She jumps back and forth quite a lot. We get to see glimpses of Mia's everyday life - babysitting, teaching, visiting her mother - interspersed with paragraphs or sometimes pages of gender theory, a bit of neuroscience, history and some of Mia's memories. She is trying to find herself anew. To find the pre-Boris Mia, and to figure out if she wants him back or if she is happier without him.

What I found the most fascinating about this book is that it tells a small handful of stories we've all heard before. Clichés. The teenagers that scheme and bully. The young mother struggling alone with her kids while her husband is working. The deceived, middle aged wife. But clichés are clichés for a reason - they do happen very often. And to the people they happen to, it's a very personal and unique (and painful) experience. Hustvedt manages, through Mia, to convey both the individual experience and to see the bigger pattern. She sees the pain of the individual that goes through it for the first time, and the cultural structures that ensures that this happens to so many people - over and over again. And her observations are always insightful.