What I Loved (eBook)

This is the story of two men who first become friends in 1970s New York, of the women in their lives, and of their sons, born the same year. Both Leo Hertzberg, an art historian, and Bill Weschler, a painter, are cultured, decent men, but neither is equipped to deal with what happens to their children - Leo's son drowns when he's 12, while Bill's son Mark grows up to be a delinquent, and the acolyte of a sinister, guru-like artist who spawns murder in his wake. Spanning the hedonism of the eighties and the chill-out nineties, this multi-layered novel combines a plot of mounting menace with a deeply moving account of familial relationships and a superbly observed portrait of an artist, set against the backdrop of a society reaching new depths of depravity in its frenetic quest for the next fashion, drug and thrill.

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LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION'Defiantly complex and frequently dazzling' Sunday Times'Siri Hustvedt's most ambitious, most rewarding novel. It mesmerises, arouses, disturbs' Salman Rushdie'Superb . . . What I Loved is a rare thing, a page turner written at full intellectual stretch, serious but witty, large-minded and morally engaged' New York Times Book Review'A love story with the grip and suspense of a thriller' Times Literary SupplementIn 1975 art historian Leo Hertzberg discovers an extraordinary painting by an unknown artist in a New York gallery. He buys the work, tracks down its creator, Bill Wechsler, and the two men embark on a life-long friendship.This is the story of their intense and troubled relationship, of the women in their lives and their work, of art and hysteria, love and seduction and their sons - born the same year but whose lives take very different paths.'A big, wide, sensuous novel - clever, sinister, yet attractively real' GuardianPRAISE FOR SIRI HUSTVEDT:'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'One of our finest novelists' Oliver Sacks'Reading a Hustvedt novel is like consuming the best of David Lynch' Financial Times'Few contemporary writers are as satisfying and stimulating to read as Siri Hustvedt' Washington Post'A 21st-century Virginia Woolf' Literary Review