Through Hustvedt's brilliant writing, we experience both the big and the small moments of these people's lives and histories through those memories that don't let go. All about me books for preschool are ripe for connection-making. When children are able to use the stories they listen to as a means for self exploration and discovery, proverbial lightbulbs go off, and they will want to read and savor those books again and again! These all about me books help kids grow and communicate It doesn’t often happen, but this book really hit an emotional chord with me; days after I put it down, it kept on haunting me. The story itself is about a mix of family situations, relationship problems, moments of hapiness and despair, but also death and psychosis, and at a certain point it even evolves into an outright horror story. That sounds a bit trite but Hustvedts characters are people of flesh and blood, with big and small yearnings, very own psychological mindsets, uncertainties and wrong assumptions, and with very divers reactions on tragic events. They go through endearing, tender moments, but also through absolutely horrible experiences. The emotional load sometimes is so raw and realistic that the reading gets on the verge of the bearable (at one point it reminded me of Elena Ferrante’s early novels). I have rarely read a novel of such intensity. And it touches on so much: the art world as well as art itself, relationships of many kinds, family, love, loss, psychology and the outsider, the world that is New York City, personas......much more that I'm forgetting (or avoiding for spoilers sake). But then is is titled "What I Loved" and it lives up to it's title.

Intense and engrossing, What I Loved could also be titled What We'll Do for Love or What Love Will Do To Us for it explores the psychology of friendships, intimate and family relationships and the actions people take for the sake of love. But I get ahead of myself . . . I had a hard time at first deciding if this novel was largely a character study or plot driven but so much happens and there is such depth in these relationships that I just stopped analyzing and became fully invested in how Hustvedt tell this story, she really does a most interesting tale justice.Todo cuanto amé', de Siri Hustvedt, es una de las novelas más inteligentes que he leído últimamente. ¿Cómo calificar un libro de inteligente, por su erudición, por su estructura narrativa, por las ideas y pensamientos que desarrolla, por la trama...? Sin duda, 'Todo cuanto amé' cumple todos estos requisitos y algunos más. Bendrai visa Trace Moroney knygelių serija ("Kai jaučiuosi piktas", "Kai jaučiuosi geras", "Kai jaučiu pavydą" ir t.t.) yra puiki ir labai gerai tinkanti mažų vaikų susipažinimui su emocijomis. Benim için oldukça farklı bir okuma deneyimiydi. Bir yandan kitabı okurken bir yandan da Paul Auster ile Siri Hustvedt çiftinin hayatındaki olayların peşine düştüm.

Two obvious strengths this novel by Hustvedt are: first, its ability to engage its reader by those series of revelations. It is like riding a rollercoaster inside a darkroom. You don’t know where she is taking you. For example, I thought that either one of the three pairs: two husbands, two wives, two sons, would have a homosexual relationship. Hustvedt made some hints (or maybe it was just me who thought that those were hints) towards this direction but she did not. I also thought that there would be a big revelation that would cap this psychological thriller just like any other thrillers ala-Agatha Christie but Hustvedt opted in ending her emotionally turbulent novel swiftly and quietly that reminded me of Philip Roth’s The Human Stain. I need to explain why the son dying (or rather, the announcement of the son being dead) upset me so much, and why that ought to have made me close the book. And I need to stress that it did annoy me. It became a stone in my shoe as I limped on with this. I couldn’t just ignore it, it was not something I could put out of mind. Kitap üzerine söylemek istediğim çok fazla şey var aslında, hatta çok sevdiğim bir kitaptaki kurgunun gerçeğe dönüşmesini okumanın heyecanı üzerine uzun uzun anlatmak istediklerim var. Lakin o kitabın ismini verdiğim anda bütün gizem dağılıp kitabın tadı kaçacağı için susuyorum. Umarım Can yayınları bu kitabı yakın zamanda yeniden yayın programına alır. Çok beğendim. Leo, our narrator, has a drawer in which he stores mementos. At one point, he puts something new in the drawer and records: "I had never put anything to remind me of Bill and Violet in the drawer before that, and I understood why. It was a place to record what I missed." Clearly, the drawer is a metaphor for the title of the book. Leo has a game he plays to help him process some of his grief or confusion. He moves the objects in the drawer around into different configurations. I was going to include a quote about this, but then I realised it gives away two key events in the story! Suffice to say, he uses different principles to arrange the objects and has to have a good reason for why he does something, for a connection that justifies one object being next to another. It helps him process what is happening to people around him and is a recurring motif in the book. No es raro que pase por nuestra mente la famosa novela de Lionel Shriver “Tenemos que hablar de Kevin” en algún momento de la lectura de esta novela, pues es, como ya muchos habrán adivinado, una novela sobre los hijos, sobre el deseo de tenerlos, sobre las conexiones que con ellos establecemos, sobre la responsabilidad que asumimos o nos echamos encima en la conformación de su personalidad, … “Supongo que todos somos producto del gozo y el sufrimiento de nuestros padres. Sus emociones permanecen grabadas en nosotros del mismo modo que la huella de sus genes.” … sobre el horror de perderlos, sobre el orgullo o la decepción y hasta la aversión que nos puede provocar su conducta, sobre la facilidad con la que nos engañamos acerca de sus virtudes y defectos, sobre como todo ello afecta a todas nuestras facetas de la vida.I love all about me books for so many reasons, but mostly because they help teach kids about themselves and how to express themselves, too.

The drama of the story is set against the New York art scene. There is a lot in this book about perception of art (a common theme in Hustvedt’s books, I think, although this is only the third one I have read). I’m struggling to articulate something about Bill’s art (he paints and sculpts and places the pictures and sculptures in boxes or behind doors) and Mark’s life. It’s almost like Mark lives out something his father might have created, but Mark shows us the hidden elements that come from him being human and not just a work of art. I need to think about this a bit more. I read a review in The Guardian that says: "She (Hustvedt) is interested in the gap between the shared story and the individual reading." And it is almost as if Bill’s art is the individual reading and Mark’s life is the shared story. I really do need to think on that, though, as it could be complete rubbish! There is much here about art and the growth and thoughts expressed in art, about being a parent and how central that is to a couple’s life, grief in its many forms and just the problems of living day to day. We see all of it through the eyes of Leo and how he interrupts what happens to him and those around him. Don’t get me wrong, the quality of Hustvedt’s prose is astonishing. What I Loved is filled with wholly-believable details. The sections of the novel that revolve around artwork and artists are clearly well-researched, and Hustvedt extracts beautiful and affecting symbols from the art that surrounds her characters. Hustvedt comes across as someone highly interested in the human condition. Because I've been engaged in a book club with three others--one who likes fiction, one who likes it with reservations, and a third who views it with trepidation--I've been thinking about why I like fiction so much. Modern fiction, classic fiction, whatever--what always draws me is the way human nature is portrayed. What does it mean to be human? Is it sad, broken, lonely, joyful, complicated? Yes.What I loved. Take note of the past tense. It evokes painful memories of the past. Things that we used to cherish and treasure that are no longer there. It evokes the feeling of losing something or someone either physically like a dead father or emotionally like an ex-lover. Come to think of it, there seems to me a big blur between physical and emotional losses. A dead father may not be physically present but emotionally, he still resides in our hearts. An ex-lover may still be there physically but is regretfully absent even in the small recesses of our hearts. Quieres decir que cualquier cosa puede ser arte si la gente así lo dice? ¿Incluso yo? —Exacto. Se trata de una cuestión de perspectiva, no de contenido.” En este sentido, guarda un gran paralelismo con su obra posterior “El mundo deslumbrante”, novela que me gustó mucho más que ésta a pesar de que también contenía detalladas y largas descripciones de obras plásticas que a mí me dejan del todo frío, en parte porque soy incapaz de imaginármelas y en parte porque soy muy escéptico con todo lo relacionado con el arte moderno. “La detención de Giles alteró drásticamente la percepción de su obra. Cosas que hasta entonces se habían interpretado como una sagaz disquisición sobre el horror comenzaron a percibirse como las sádicas fantasías de un asesino. La peculiar insularidad del panorama artístico neoyorquino había logrado a menudo mostrar lo obvio como sutil, lo absurdo como inteligente y lo sensacionalista como subversivo. Todo era una cuestión de «afinar el mensaje».”Tanto es así que varias veces estuve tentado de abandonar en el para mí larguísimo —un tercio de la novela— preludio a la historia que es toda la primera parte. Afortunadamente persistí, cosa que tengo que agradecer a que esta lectura no la realicé en solitario, porque a partir de aquí la cosa cambia radicalmente y a mejor, a mucho mejor.