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A review by catherine_the_greatest
The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt
4.0
Damn. Harriet Burden is angry. She's angry at her father who never showed any affection, her unfaithful art-dealer husband who refused to promote her work because he didn't want to be accused of nepotism. Since both of them are dead, she turns her anger on the art world as a whole for having undervalued her for being female, for being large and unfeminine, and now for being old. She hatches an elaborate plan to prove that she is a good artist and that she has been discriminated against for these reasons. She will exhibit her work under three young, male identities (using actual people) and then reveal the hoax, humiliating the art critics, agents, buyers, gallery owners, etc.
This novel is written under the premise that Harriet had died, having been unsuccessful in proving that the hoax really was a hoax in all but one of the cases. An editor has assembled excerpts of Harriet's prolific writing, as well as writing and interviews from her adult children, friends, critics, and various other players in the story. Of the three men who she says exhibited her work as their own, one has disappeared, one freely admits that it was Harriet's work, and the last has possibly commited suicide after publicly denying that his work was Harriet's. It's left to the reader to piece together who is telling the truth.
I don't usually read a lot of "angry woman lit," (Is that a genre? If so, does [b:Where'd You Go, Bernadette|13526165|Where'd You Go, Bernadette|Maria Semple|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1338822317s/13526165.jpg|17626728] also qualify?) but I also recently read [b:The Woman Upstairs|15701217|The Woman Upstairs|Claire Messud|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1345666863s/15701217.jpg|18450578]. There are certain parallels between the two novels, and while Harriet and Nora Eldridge are very different on the outside, I think these two work as interesting companion pieces. Both women have been unsuccessful in the art world and feel betrayed by people they've trusted. Both books deal with installation art with a lot of quirky little details.
The Blazing World has a much wider scope, with the many perspectives and a dazzling array of sources Harriet quotes from her extensive reading. Harriet is publicly angry, considered by more than a few to be mentally unstable. The Woman Upstairs is a quieter, more intimate novel, just as as Nora lives a life of quiet desperation.
This novel is written under the premise that Harriet had died, having been unsuccessful in proving that the hoax really was a hoax in all but one of the cases. An editor has assembled excerpts of Harriet's prolific writing, as well as writing and interviews from her adult children, friends, critics, and various other players in the story. Of the three men who she says exhibited her work as their own, one has disappeared, one freely admits that it was Harriet's work, and the last has possibly commited suicide after publicly denying that his work was Harriet's. It's left to the reader to piece together who is telling the truth.
I don't usually read a lot of "angry woman lit," (Is that a genre? If so, does [b:Where'd You Go, Bernadette|13526165|Where'd You Go, Bernadette|Maria Semple|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1338822317s/13526165.jpg|17626728] also qualify?) but I also recently read [b:The Woman Upstairs|15701217|The Woman Upstairs|Claire Messud|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1345666863s/15701217.jpg|18450578]. There are certain parallels between the two novels, and while Harriet and Nora Eldridge are very different on the outside, I think these two work as interesting companion pieces. Both women have been unsuccessful in the art world and feel betrayed by people they've trusted. Both books deal with installation art with a lot of quirky little details.
The Blazing World has a much wider scope, with the many perspectives and a dazzling array of sources Harriet quotes from her extensive reading. Harriet is publicly angry, considered by more than a few to be mentally unstable. The Woman Upstairs is a quieter, more intimate novel, just as as Nora lives a life of quiet desperation.