Synopses & Reviews
Lily Dahl, the young heroine of Siri Hustvedts riveting novel, The Enchantment of Lily Dahl, is a strong, beautiful and daring nineteen year old girl poised on the brink of womanhood. In the small town of Webster, Minnesota, Lilys life revolves around the Ideal Café. She lives above the café in a rented room and works there as a waitress. This is the stage Hustvedt sets for a bizarre cast of characters who frequent the café and populate Lilys life.
Weaving a fascinating spell of mystery and suspense, Hustvedt recounts the erotic adventures, unexpected friendships, and inexplicable acts of madness that usher Lily into womanhood. By skillfully mixing reality and dreams, fact and fiction, past and present, Hustvedt creates a powerful world not quite real, but altogether truthful.
Review
"This dark, sexy, spooky novel is an indelibly memorable fiction. Read it and it will haunt you. "-Salman Rushdie
"In her sophisticated handling of a powerful sexual drama, Siri Hustvedt proves the praise lavished on her first novel The Blindfold was not exaggerated. "-Baltimore Sun
"The Enchantment of Lily Dahl has the power to pull readers firmly into its orbit and to keep them there. "-The Village Voice
Review
"Siri Hustvedt writes, literally, like a dream--a dream that's at once intensely romantic and disturbingly eerie. This dark, sexy, spooky novel is an indelibly memorable fiction. Read it and it will haunt you."--Salman Rushdie
"Highly original...a crystalline blend of innocence and sophistication, irony and candor."--Newsday
"The Enchantment of Lily Dahl has the power to pull readers firmly into its orbit and to keep them there." --The Village Voice
"She writes like a dream."--GQ
Synopsis
The protagonist of Siri Hustvedt's astonishing second novel is a heroine of the old style: tough, beautiful, and brave. Standing at the threshold of adulthood, she enters a new world of erotic adventure, profound but unexpected friendship, and inexplicable, frightening acts of madness. Lily's story is also the story of a small town--Webster, Minnesota--where people are brought together by a powerful sense of place, both geographical and spiritual. Here gossip, secrets, and storytelling are as essential to the bond among its people as the borders that enclose the town.
The real secret at the heart of the book is the one that lies between reality and appearances, between waking life and dreams, at the place where imagination draws on its transforming powers in the face of death.
About the Author
Siri Hustvedt is the author of two previous novels,
The Blindfold and
The Enchantment of Lily Dahl also available from Picador. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, Paul Auster.