Synopses & Reviews
Iris Vegan, a young, impoverished graduate student from the Midwest, finds herself entangled with four powerful but threatening characters as she tries to adjust to life in New York City. Mr. Morning, an inscrutable urban recluse, employs Iris to tape-record verbal descriptions of objects that belonged to a murder victim. George, a photographer, takes an eerie portrait of Iris, which then acquires a strange life of its own, appearing and disappearing without warning around the city. After a series of blinding migraines, Iris ends up in a hospital room with Mrs. O., a woman who has lost her mind and memory to a stroke, but who nevertheless retains both the strength and energy to torment her fellow patient. And finally, there is Professor Rose, Iris's teacher and eventually her lover. While working with him on the translation of a German novella called The Brutal Boy, she discovers in its protagonist, Klaus, a vehicle for her own transformation and ventures out into the city again--this time dressed as a man.
Siri Hustvedt is the author of The Enchantment of Lily Dahl and What I Loved. The Blindfold is her first novel. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband.
Iris Vegan, a young, impoverished graduate student from the Midwest, finds herself entangled with four powerful but threatening characters as she tries to adjust to life in New York City. Mr. Morning, an inscrutable urban recluse, employs Iris to tape-record verbal descriptions of objects that belonged to a murder victim. George, a photographer, takes an eerie portrait of Iris, which then acquires a strange life of its own, appearing and disappearing without warning around the city. After a series of blinding migraines, Iris ends up in a hospital room with Mrs. O., a woman who has lost her mind and memory to a stroke, but who nevertheless retains both the strength and energy to torment her fellow patient. And finally, there is Professor Rose, Iris's teacher and eventually her lover. While working with him on the translation of a German novella called The Brutal Boy, she discovers in its protagonist, Klaus, a vehicle for her own transformation and ventures out in to the city again--this time dressed as a man.
This is a work of dizzying intensity . . . eloquent and vivid.--Don DeLillo, author of Underworld
The Blindfold] attests to Ms. Hustvedt's thoroughly original style and her lucid contemporary voice . . . the announcement of a talented writer's arrival.--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
The Blindfold is a seamless piece of work--a haunting odyssey of annihilation and resurrection carved by an expert storyteller.--San Francisco Chronicle
Very powerful, and awfully smart and well-craft, a clear bright sign that the feminist and postmodern traditions are far from exhausted.--David Foster Wallace, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Hustvedt] has a knack for intimate detail, for suggesting, with some intensity, the compulsive psychological spiral of drowning souls, for creating powerful moods with just enough words.--Jenifer Levin, The New York Times Book Review
The Blindfold moves clear-eyed, awake, and aware, through a landscape of terror and mystery. Cruelty, madness, and death surround its young heroine, who describes her often surreal adventures with the inherently contemporary--it's as though Lewis Carroll's Alice were to describe a journey into hell.--Peter Straub
She's a writer of strong, sometimes astonishing gifts; there's a spareness and ominousness about her prose that at its best recalls Rilke.--Emily White, The Voice Literary Supplement
The novel succeeds magnificently as an elegant set of variations on the theme of identity, perfectly set in the surreality of New York, and delivered with calm, soul-sick cadences.--Katherine A. Powers, The Boston Globe
This is a smart and marvelous book, an unforgettable narrator and a haunting telling of wonders in prose that can alter your brainwaves. Hustvedt's stakes are high, and one reads her novel at serious risk to one's well-being--the only kind of reading that counts. What an extraordinary debut --Russell Banks
Poet Siri Hustvedt has written a riveting first novel that transports the reader into Manhattan, an island city that teems with the unexpected, the inexplicable, the haunted, the beautiful, the poor, the rich.--Islands
Hustvedt spins layers upon layers, casting both her characters and her readers into a world where objects take on lives of their own and nothing is as it seems to be. . . . Edgy and uncertain, even, at times, Kafkaesque, this is a fine first effort, captivating and intriguing.--Los Angeles Reader
Review
"This is a work of dizzying intensity. . .eloquent and vivid." --Don DeLillo, author of
Underworld"[The Blindfold] attests to Ms. Hustvedts thoroughly original style and her lucid contemporary voice. . .the announcement of a talented writers arrival." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
"The Blindfold is a seamless piece of work--a haunting odyssey of annihilation and resurrection carved by an expert storyteller." --San Francisco Chronicle
Synopsis
Iris Vegan, a young, impoverished graduate student from the Midwest, finds herself entangled with four powerful but threatening characters as she tries to adjust to life in New York City. Mr. Morning, an inscrutable urban recluse, employs Iris to tape-record verbal descriptions of objects that belonged to a murder victim. George, a photographer, takes an eerie portrait of Iris, which then acquires a strange life of its own, appearing and disappearing without warning around the city. After a series of blinding migraines, Iris ends up in a hospital room with Mrs. O., a woman who has lost her mind and memory to a stroke, but who nevertheless retains both the strength and energy to torment her fellow patient. And finally, there is Professor Rose, Iriss teacher and eventually her lover. While working with him on the translation of a German novella called
The Brutal Boy, she discovers in its protagonist, Klaus, a vehicle for her own transformation and ventures out into the city again--this time dressed as a man.
About the Author
Siri Hustvedt is the author of
The Enchantment of Lily Dahl and
What I Loved.
The Blindfold is her first novel. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband.