Grapple, argue, engage and marvel as Hustvedt plays
The Age
Saturday February 26, 2011
THE SUMMER WITHOUT MENBy Siri HustvedtSceptre, $25REVIEW JENNIFER LEVASSEURTHE Summer without Men, Siri Hustvedt's fifth novel, is an uncomfortable (but often witty) read for those of us who like to delude ourselves that the man-woman problem has long been solved. Unafraid to mix frustration and goofy humour, intellectual pyrotechnics and angry rants, Hustvedt has created a story that reaches back to some of the most basic questions about how women live with and apart from men, from childhood through death. Unconventional in its style, The Summer without Men mixes devices from film and drama, line drawings, a structured stream-of-consciousness narrative that bleeds in and out of scenes and time, and mini essays on topics as divergent as genetics and neuroscience, the history of stigmatics and the sexual politics of Jane Austen.Mia Fredrickson, a 55-year-old New York poet, has recently experienced a "psychotic episode" after her scientist husband of 30 years tells her he wants a "pause"."The Pause," Hustvedt writes, "was French with limp but shiny brown hair. She had significant breasts that were real, not manufactured, narrow rectangular glasses, and an excellent mind."Unable to understand her life disconnected from his, torn by paranoid fears and reeling from the shock and humiliation, Mia returns to Minnesota after a brief but terrifying admittance to a psychiatric ward.From the first paragraph of the novel, in which Mia describes her mind as microwave popcorn kernels, it's clear that Hustvedt has both in tone and style moved away from the territory of her acclaimed novels What I Loved and The Sorrows of an American. Many of her preoccupations resurface in surprising ways, particularly her interest in psychology, hidden and distorted lives, secret art, the boundaries of language, and the fallibility of memory, but this new novel is an experiment, an intellectual romp (complete with winks to the reader) through some of the most basic questions of what it means to be female.In Minnesota, Mia creates a new, temporary life for herself, peopled with images of her past, present and future. She dubs her mother and the spry nursing home set "The Swans" surely a play on Truman Capote's beautiful society swans, though these feisty old widows have lost their physical grace. To boost her confidence and give herself purpose, Mia offers a poetry workshop to adolescents. The seven pubescent girls, with their devilish machinations and secret codes, bring back painful memories. Her new neighbour, young mother Lola, forces Mia to confront the completed parts of her own life. Surrounded by these varying faces of womanhood, Mia examines her worth and place.In this pensive interlude between crack-up and normality, during the seemingly impossible yet inevitable return to mundanity, Hustvedt charts Mia's mental state as she's influenced by her many muses. The novel explores how a moment can encapsulate and also alter our entire being, reforming everything that has come before.The Summer without Men is a rollicking, jarring, provocative, illuminating and occasionally frustrating read. For its few pages, it is many books, many voices, many genres and many moods in one. Unafraid to subvert her readers' expectations, Hustvedt often retraces ground, uses postmodern devices, loads her text with allusions and word-play, splices scenes, questions the divide between comedy and tragedy, directly addresses the reader (in one instance, thanking us for not yet throwing the book), and delves into some of the most painful and embarrassing moments of human sexuality.Hustvedt wants to play an intellectual and emotional game with her reader. A kind of modern-day Montaigne, she has no fear of beginning at the first, often obvious question, then trying to discover through writing what she believes. The Summer without Men shows a mind alive, at work and boundlessly curious about the way people live and love. It is the kind of book with which to grapple and argue, to challenge and fight, but also with which to engage and at which to marvel.
© 2011 The Age