Books 2014: The Blazing world

Hustvedt is a true favourite of mine. I love her clear, cerebral way of writing. This novel is written as an artist biography, and it is so realistic that I several times found myself thinking that I must find out more about the artist, Harriet Burden.

We get excerpts from the artist's diaries, interviews with journalists and other artists and art critics. And it's all fiction. At the bottom of the story is Harriet Burden's attempt to prove to the art world that women artist matter less than their male counterparts. So she "constructs" three young, male artists who all exhibit her work, while the art world hails the new young males. Her theory is that if she had exhibited under her own name, no one would have cared. Everyhting doesn't go quite as planned, however, and we get a heartfelt and often sad story about the aging Burden.

A very surprising book, and I really can't forget the way I was "fooled" to believe it was fact, not fiction I was reading. Again - truly recommendable.

Hustvedt, Siri (2014): The Blazing World. London: Sceptre. Kindle edition.