Carol Rumens
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman
Memories of the Future
By Siri Hustvedt
Sceptre 318pp £18.99
‘Years ago I left the wide, flat fields of rural Minnesota for the island of Manhattan to find the hero of my first novel,’ writes Siri Hustvedt at the beginning of Memories of the Future. An experimental bildungsroman tracing the emergence of the writer-as-a-young-woman, it combines what appears to be straight memoir, notebook and diary material, autobiographical fiction and, just possibly, fictional fiction. Organising her 94-year-old mother’s move to assisted housing, the adult Hustvedt describes the discovery of notebooks she kept as a young woman forty years earlier, which include drafts of a novel. This subtly embedded inciting incident might be documentary fact or literary device – or a little of each. The reader has simply to play along, enjoying the deft and elegant writing while appreciating Hustvedt’s timely exploration of questions about authenticity, memory and demarcations of literary genre.
Sexual relationships and the discovery of heroes, genuine and imagined, are among the important challenges for the young S H. Aged twenty-three, lodging in New York for a year of self-discovery before taking up a fellowship at Columbia, she has a need for role models as well as heroes. Whitney
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm