Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Just before I was ready to write this review, I happened across an interesting statistic: at this year's Whitney biennial, only 32 percent of the represented artists were women (down from four years ago when for the first time ever, over half of featured artists were women.) Siri Hustvedt's latest book, The Blazing World, is spot-on when its main character, Harriet Burden, muses, "I suspected that if I had come in another place, my work might have been embraced or, at least approached with greater seriousness." The concept - an outstanding female artist concealing her gender behind three successive male beards--is solid and Ms. Hustvedt is certainly a very masterful writer. So what went wrong for me? Just this: my personal bias is that I should not be steeped in knowledge of western philosophy and sometimes obscure contemporary art to be able to immerse myself in a book. When one character says that Harriet has "taken the Kierkegaardian position", I shouldn't need to scratch my head. When philosopher Arthur Danno, Vasari, Diderot, and others are mentioned in one paragraph, I should have at least a simple roadmap about what it all means. And when fictional footnotes are added, I shouldn't believe that it is the author displaying her eruditeness. I am not unintelligent; I hold a Master's degree from an excellent university. Yet I felt adrift. My belief is that in the very best books, words are precisely used to clarify the human condition and create a connection with the reader rather than distance that reader. From time to time, there was an intellectual connection to this novel, but not a visceral one. Certainly there was little warmth. The structure - beginning with a preface from the editor of a narrative about Burden and punctuated with various voices and statements - is imaginative yet alienating. The reading pleasures of dialogue and character interaction are withheld. The Blazing World reminds me of a sometimes lovely but often inaccessible piece of contemporary art: one can admire the work and understand its craftsmanship but without that all-important connection, one doesn't have that compulsion to hang it in one's living room. Readers I respect have already given this book many accolades, and I freely acknowledge that reading is subjective and this may simply not be the right book for me.