Home › Books › Mothers, Fathers, and Others: Essays
Mothers, Fathers, and Others: Essays
by
58/99
Critics' Rating Index
21/99
Readers' Rating Index
n/a
Scholars' Citation Index
89/99
Volume of Reviews
37/99
Volume of Reader Ratings
Sign in to add to your shelf, rate, or review this book.
About This Book
Feminist philosophy meets family memoir in this new essay collection from Siri Hustvedt, an exploration of the shifting borders that define human experience, including boundaries we usually take for granted—between ourselves and others, nature and nurture, viewer and artwork—which turn out to be far less stable than we imagine.Described as "a 21st-century Virginia Woolf" in the Literary Review (UK), Man Booker longlisted Hustvedt displays her expansive intellect and interdisciplinary knowledge in this collection that moves effortlessly between stories of her mother, grandmother, and daughter to artistic mothers, Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, and Lousie Bourgeois, to the broader meanings of maternal in a culture shaped by misogyny and fantasies of paternal authority. Mothers, Fathers, and Others is a polymath's journey into urgent questions about familial love and hate, human prejudice and cruelty, and the transformative power of art. This moving, fierce, and often funny book is finally about the fact that being alive means being in states of constant, dynamic exchange with what is around us, and that the impulse to draw hard and fast conceptual borders where none exist carries serious theoretical and political dangers.
Reviews
"When Hustvedt returns to the idea of what's missing, her writing takes off ..."
"[a] richly stirring and resonant collection..."
"In several essays, she does a tremendous reading of language, translation and conscious thought."
"They aren't bad, or even particularly unsuccessful; they just stick out as being relics of another time, in contrast with Hustvedt's other, more enduringly relevant works."
"In her typical fashion, Hustvedt pulls from psychoanalysis, philosophy, literature, and art criticism to make brilliant connections among her takes on the world."
"Mothers, Fathers, and Others makes a fascinating companion to Motherhood: A Manifesto ..."
"While the variety keeps each essay interesting and creates a picture of well-rounded, holistic arguments, the essays at times feel unfocused and meandering, varying in density and interest level."
"The author, one of our most appealing literary polymaths, quotes innumerable resources, and she maintains a pleasingly nuanced balance between striking originality and intellectual synthesis ..."
"The essays about her family are particularly engrossing, as is the one called 'Mentor Ghosts,' a sort of Hustvedtian take on Rebecca Solnit's 'Men Explain Things to Me,' where Hustvedt describes the repeated attempts of men to credit her husband (the novelist Paul Auster) for writing her novels."
Preview
Reader Reviews
0 reviewsSign in to write a review.
No reader reviews yet. Be the first!