What I Loved

"Superb . . . What I Loved is a rare thing, a page-turner written at full intellectual stretch, serious but witty, large-minded and morally engaged."—The New York Times Book Review

"What I Loved is Siri Hustvedt's most ambitious, most rewarding novel. It mesmerizes, rouses, disturbs. Hustvedt is that rare artist, a writer of high intelligence, profound sensuality and a less easily definable capacity for which the only word I can find is wisdom."—Salman Rushdie

"A remarkable achievement of Siri Hustvedt's prose, with its attention to nuance and intricacy, is its demonstration that friendship is a powerful form of intelligence. The book's final pages acknowledge nearly overwhelming loss, but because the reader understands so much, their sadness feels almost like joy."—The Washington Post

"Delivers rare insight into the artist's need to make things, the critic's drive to name things, and the transforming—but also transfixing—power of love . . . an urgent meditation on the meaning of art."—Jori Finkel, The Village Voice

"Filled with ferocious wisdom about the way the heart deals with suffering."—Minneapolis Star Tribune

"What I Loved represents another accomplished performance from Hustvedt, a writer of undeniable talent."—San Francisco Chronicle

"This richly rewarding novel has everything—a compelling and suspenseful plot peopled by feeling, thinking characters who pursue intellectual and artistic careers . . . A reader becomes deeply engaged."—The Boston Globe

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"Absorbing . . . completely engrossing . . . What I Loved is remarkable."—The Seattle Times

"It would be hard to imagine a deeper portrait of friendship between two mature men than the one painted by Siri Hustvedt in her third and best novel . . . What I Loved is fully fleshed, richly detailed, and multilayered in its psychological implications . . . [It] isn't merely a novel of ideas, but one that immerses the reader in the richness of life's ambiguities."—Chicago Sun-Times

"Moving and skillfully drawn . . . this is a novel that both moves and intrigues."—The Philadelphia Inquirer

"In her third novel, Hustvedt, a sophisticated and alluring writer drawn to the psyche's most convoluted passageways, co-opts New York's competitive and faddish art world for its symbol-laden milieu. Leo Hertzberg, a thoughtful art historian, narrates a measured and mesmerizing tale of passion and tragedy that spans 20 years and involves his wife, Erica, a literary scholar . . . By wedding the ordinary torments of family life with the heightened sensibilities of artists and a criminal grotesqueness, Hustvedt ponders the dark side of inheritance and creativity and the crushing burdens of love."—Booklist (starred review)

"The ardent exchange of ideas underlies all manner of passionate action in Hustvedt's third novel (after The Enchantment of Lily Dahl), a dark tale of two intertwined New York families . . . So solid and complex are Hustvedt's characters that the change in pace is effortlessly effected—the plot developments are the natural extension of the author's meticulous examination of relationships and motives . . . A breakout work for Hustvedt."—Publishers Weekly (starred Review)