The Summer Without Men

While A Visit from the Goon Squad had to contend with the expectations generated by prizes and review, The Summer Without Men had an even more difficult challenge because it's written by Siri Hustvedt, author of one of my favourite books, What I Loved. What I Loved explores art and creativity, love and loss and the often fine line between madness and sanity.

After reading What I Loved I found Hustvedt's next book The Sorrows of an American disappointing.  It just didn't engage me in the same way. So I wasn't particularly excited about reading this one but it found its way onto my bedside table via a 3 for 2 offer. However, I really enjoyed it when I got round to reading it.

The husband of the protagonist Mia asks her for a pause in their marriage while he pursues his affair with a colleague. She initially falls apart and then moves back to her hometown for the summer to spend time with her mother and teach poetry to a group of teenage girls. The women of the town take centre stage and the novel explores what it means to be a woman in various stages of life: the teenage girls starting to explore womanhood, the young mother struggling in a difficult relationship, the middle aged woman questioning her relationship and her work and the older women facing infirmity and death. It's a very different novel to What I Loved, but some of the same themes emerge around creativity and mental health, this time from the point of view of women. While the synopsis can sound a bit twee and folksy, the novel isn't.  The characters challenge expectations about how they should behave and don't offer easy answers.

As a side point, one of the reviews on my copy of the book says 'A warm, affecting tale about love, loss and finding consolation in female friendship...I, for one, would prefer Hustvedt's name on the cover to that of many male novelists.' (Sebastian Shakespeare, Tatler).  I really hope this is taken out of context as the idea that the reviewer thinks it's a good thing to say that Hustvedt is better than quite a few men is deeply depressing.