nomadreader

The backstory: The Blazing World  is on the 2014 Booker Prize longlist. The basics: Visual artist Harriet Burden and her work have long been in the shadow of her artist husband. When she recruits three young, male artists to show her work under their name, the men are heralded as brilliant and inventive artists. My thoughts: Hustvedt arranges this novel as a series of (fictional, obviously) texts put together in an edited volume. There are contributions from Harriet's journals; art critics; previously published interviews and reviews; narratives from her children, her therapist and best friend; people who knew the male artists; and the male artists themselves. The degree of difficulty in this novel is incredibly high. Hustvedt made me forget I was reading fiction. This novel reads like nonfiction or journalism. It often felt investigative; I wanted to see where the story ended, and I had to keep reminding myself Harriet Burden and her experiment aren't real. It's a...