The Summer Without Men

Nov 04, 2011 Teresa rated it 4 of 5 stars

4 and 1/2 stars

This is a 'mature' novel that's very aware of itself as being a novel, though the fictional narrator is writing her own story. It's also both more and less than a novel, with more discourses than plot (which the narrator herself points out more than halfway through) and, going against what we've been taught about fiction, it's more telling than showing -- and it all works. As Francine Prose writes in Reading Like a Writer (using an an Alice Munro story as an example) : "There are...more

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Jun 24, 2011 oriana rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-2011

My latest for CCLaP!

I will admit that I can be very smug. I've been obsessively immersed in books for so long now that I tend to have opinions on everything literary, founded or un-. So of course I had an opinion about Siri Hustvedt, wife of Paul Auster, posed kind of ridiculously in her author photo, with her black turtleneck and piercing stare, writer of--what? I'm not sure what I thought she wrote, mainstream-ish fiction for smart moms, maybe? Stuff like The Time Traveler's Wife or The Memory...more My latest for CCLaP!

I will admit that I can be very smug. I've been obsessively immersed in books for so long now that I tend to have opinions on everything literary, founded or un-. So of course I had an opinion about Siri Hustvedt, wife of Paul Auster, posed kind of ridiculously in her author photo, with her black turtleneck and piercing stare, writer of--what? I'm not sure what I thought she wrote, mainstream-ish fiction for smart moms, maybe? Stuff like The Time Traveler's Wife or The Memory Keeper's Daughter or anything by Jodi Picoult, where it's all plangent and emotional but in a kind of self-absorbed way, and has meaty characters but predictable plots full of poignancy and exquisite misery. Or something. I haven't read those other books either, so who knows, I could be wrong about them too. Anyway, I'd been sure that the books Siri wrote were not ones I'd necessarily scorn, but also not anything I was in a hurry to pick up.

And I will further admit that I often let my preconceptions become self-fulfilling prophesies. So when I started this book and realized it was going to be about a bunch of girls--a middle-aged cuckoldee, a handful of widows in an old-folks' home, a passel of tweens in a poetry class, a young mother and her voluble, bewigged toddler--I wasn't really thrilled. Those are obvious choices of people to write about, over-tilled ground, seemingly automatically ready to go off into clichéd, sentimental territory, where everyone teaches each other valuable life lessons by sharing pain and going through trauma and coming out stronger on the other side.

And it's true, in some ways that's what happened. But oh, Siri charmed me. She wooed me and impressed me and dragged me over to her side. She's super smart, but subtle about it, not cloying or show-offy like the hipster kids I so adore (Marisha Pessl, Benjamin Kunkel, et al.). She weaves the many narratives deftly, with a really mature and intentional sense of pacing. Her language is lovely. She spatters the narrative with all kinds of musings--on psychology, philosophy, physiology, history, literature--which are all actually relevant, if not to the actual plot, than to the mind of the narrator, whose thoughts we spend the whole novel navigating. Lots of the book is in fact about other books--there are book club meetings and poetry classes and quite a lot of reading and musing on reading. She also does this cool thing where she subverts her own use of bad clichés by having the narrator then actually picture the cliché to diffuse it, which I surprisingly really loved. And she's got some good meta-ness too, some breaking of the fourth wall and earnestly addressing the reader, taking us by the hand or blindfolding us or otherwise revealing her own machinations before she performs them, thus further distancing her from the sentimental, heavily plotted pabulum that I'd been afraid I was in for.

I'm not saying the book was without flaws. Certainly not all the characters are as full as they could be--the seven tweens were virtually indistinguishable to me, even after repeated mentions of this or that trait assigned to one or the other--but that's not unfitting for the plot arc they were involved in, which was one of shifting narratives, fluid identities, tweenagerhood as a many-headed beast rather than a selection of individuals. And the old ladies were seemingly ranked in order of importance to the narrator, and assigned characterizations accordingly--but isn't that a bit like life? You don't know everything about all your mom's friends; you know a few interesting things about the ones you find interesting. And then also she did this weird amateur thing (which I can't believe her publisher let her get away with, actually) where instead of using italics for emphasis she used ALL CAPS, like some shouting internet commenter, which was totally bizarre and made me cringe every time and probably wouldn't bother people who aren't copyeditors but still is just wrong.

But on the whole, this was a really engaging book, very smart, very full. I'm trying to say that I was wrong, okay? I'm allowing myself to loosen my grip on a deeply held conviction and admit fault. Aren't you proud of me? Just don't expect me to pick up Lovely Bones anytime soon.(less)

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Mar 30, 2011 switterbug (Betsey) rated it 2 of 5 stars

The front cover of the advanced reader's copy I hold in my hand depicts a woman, dynamically in flight, yet with an image of dismemberment, as the title takes the place of the woman's trunk. Hustvedt is no stranger to dismemberment, both in fiction and in life. If you peer into her history with novelist husband, Paul Auster, you will note that she has a stepson with a troubled past that features dismemberment, although once removed. In THE BLINDFOLD, the main character, Iris (Siri spelled backwa...more

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May 21, 2013 Jillwilson rated it 2 of 5 stars

The Summer Without Character Development - OK - it's a cheap play on the title of this book. But this woman is a seriously good writer and I felt that this novel is a bit lazy.

Mia is in free fall because her husband has left her for a much younger woman. Its such a free fall that she ends up in a psych hospital. I get this - marriage break up has had almost that level of impact on some of my friends. She returns to the town of her childhood to regain a sense of herself. In 'the summer' of the s...more

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Mar 15, 2013 Jo Case rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: humour-black, novel

Siri Hustvedt is renowned for her elegant, cerebral novels and darkly bewitching storytelling (particularly the psychological thriller What I Loved). Her latest novel contains all her trademark elements, though she sheds her recent male narrators to feature a cross-generational, deliberately all-female cast of characters, in what appears a nod to the classic 1939 film The Women. And from its epigraph – a snatch of dialogue between Cary Grant and Irene Dunne, to its last words (‘FADE TO BLACK’),...more Siri Hustvedt is renowned for her elegant, cerebral novels and darkly bewitching storytelling (particularly the psychological thriller What I Loved). Her latest novel contains all her trademark elements, though she sheds her recent male narrators to feature a cross-generational, deliberately all-female cast of characters, in what appears a nod to the classic 1939 film The Women. And from its epigraph – a snatch of dialogue between Cary Grant and Irene Dunne, to its last words (‘FADE TO BLACK’), this story is steeped in homage to the whip-smart ‘battle of the sexes’ comedies of the 1930s.

When Mia’s brilliant but inept neuroscientist husband asks for a ‘pause’ in their 30-year marriage so he can pursue an attraction to a colleague, she literally goes mad. Following brief incarceration in an asylum, she flees to spend the summer in her native Minnesota, renting a house near her ageing mother and teaching a poetry course to pubescent girls. She befriends her back-fence neighbours – twentysomething Lola and her feisty four-year-old, Flora – and her mother’s group of ‘formidable’ widower friends, nicknamed ‘the Five Swans’.

Hustvedt deftly, inventively explores how these characters’ experiences reflect universal truths for contemporary women. Mia is enriched by the relationships with the women around her (particularly her mother), but also observes how women can injure each other, as her class of new adolescents descend into ‘an invisible undertow’ of too-familiar bully- ing and ostracism. She wonders, ‘If girls banged each other over the head instead of plotting nasty little games of sabotage, would they suffer less?’

This subversion of niceness is central to the novel, along with the different ways suppressed anger, rebellion and competitiveness – all considered by science to be ‘male’ traits (as Mia brilliantly, sarcastically outlines) – can emerge. For instance, one of the Swans finds release in embroidering ‘secret amusements’ – craftworks seemingly ‘Happy-Wappy’ but secretly layered with ‘little scenes within scenes’, such as women masturbating, or flying naked. The conventions of art, and of storytelling itself, are on show here. On many levels, she looks at the way we create the stories of our own lives – the way that shifting perspectives alter the story, the difficulty of arriving at a shared ‘truth’ – as well as the way we read stories.

At the novel’s heart, though, is a complex romance, a story that ‘begins deep in marriage, after years of sex and talk and fights’. It’s deeply imperfect – and deeply unfashionable. Mia’s fierce connection to Boris, she admits, is made of both good aspects and bad – but, most binding and irresistible of all, is the story they have written together. Hustvedt writes that the difference between comedy and tragedy is in the structure. ‘A comedy depends on stopping the moment at exactly the right moment.’ I won’t give away the ending, but I will say that it stops at just the right moment, in just the right way.

This review was first published on www.readings.com.au.(less)

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Jan 14, 2013 Kerima Internauta rated it 5 of 5 stars

"Der Sommer ohne Männer" ist ein wunderbares Buch über die Krise einer Frau in den mittleren Jahren ;-) die von ihrem Ehemann für eine Jüngere verlassen wird. Erst dachte ich, dass das gar nicht mein Thema ist, aber das Buch hat so viele Themen, die humorvoll, intelligent und sehr locker erzählt werden. Es geht um Liebeskummer, die Abkehr vom ewigen "gefallen wollen" und dem Buhlen um die Gunst der Männer.

Nach einem Nervenzusammenbruch und einem Psychatrieaufenthalt, zieht die Protagonistin aufs...more

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Dec 28, 2012 Lisa rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: thosebooks

If I am ever thrown by something in Siri Hustvedt's books, it is how the female lead can never ever, like not ever, conceivably be plain. It is an existence unimaginable, apparently, and makes her range seem somewhat limited - she has tackled male narrators successfully, I think (of course their lovers and girlfriends are all fair to beautiful) - a fact that I admired a lot at the time, but the females all seem to be of the same school of the beautiful and well-learned, and if not yet well learn...more

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Nov 29, 2012 Jenny rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: feminism, relationships, in-my-library, read-2012, favourites, fiction-in-swedish, contemporary, american-fiction

Jag funderade länge på att läsa Sommaren utan män innan jag faktiskt gjorde en ansträngning för att köpa den. Varför det tog en sådan tid berodde dels på att jag inte gillade beskrivningen av boken. Det påminner lite om chick lit – en genre som jag inte riktigt förstår mig på. Dels hittade jag aldrig en framsida som jag riktigt gillade. Ytligt, jag vet, men så är det ibland. När jag var på ICA häromdagen såg jag Nordstedts version, som ni kan se ovan, och fastnade direkt för den. Mycket snygg. J...more Jag funderade länge på att läsa Sommaren utan män innan jag faktiskt gjorde en ansträngning för att köpa den. Varför det tog en sådan tid berodde dels på att jag inte gillade beskrivningen av boken. Det påminner lite om chick lit – en genre som jag inte riktigt förstår mig på. Dels hittade jag aldrig en framsida som jag riktigt gillade. Ytligt, jag vet, men så är det ibland. När jag var på ICA häromdagen såg jag Nordstedts version, som ni kan se ovan, och fastnade direkt för den. Mycket snygg. Jag satte mig i parken utanför ICA för att läsa. Plötsligt hade det gått nästan två timmar och halva boken var läst. Min skjuts från jobbet stod och väntade på mig.

Det finns så mycket jag skulle vilja säga om Sommaren utan män. Jag känner däremot att jag inte riktigt klarar av det. Jag har för mycket att säga, för många känslor men inget riktigt sätt att få ut det på. Jag riktigt spricker av lycka över hur bra boken är. Jag fastnade direkt för handlingen och Mia. Och de flesta andra karaktärerna. Samtidigt är jag så sorgsen. Jag är ledsen över Mias och Boris relation. Jag är ledsen över Mias psykiska hälsa. Jag är ledsen över hennes mamma, mammans vänner och de sju flickorna.

Ute i korridoren hejdade sig min mor. Hon tryckte båda händerna mot bröstet, slöt ögonen och sa dämpat: ”Det är så bittert.”
”Vadå, mamma?”
”Att bli gammal.”
s. 187

Hustvedt skapar många intressanta möten mellan generationerna i Sommaren utan män. Det är ett möten mellan Mia och hennes mamma med väninnor. Det är även möten mellan Mia och de sju flickorna, som inte kan vara mer än 12-13 år gamla. Det mesta kan man känna igen ur sitt eget och andras liv. Flickornas sammandrabbningar är bara ett exempel, vilket huvudkaraktären själv lyfter fram vid ett tillfälle, på sådant som alltid uppstår och alltid kommer att uppstå.

För att avsluta, ett stycke som jag tycker summerar mina känslor inför boken finns på sida 150-151:

"Jag rörde mig inte på ett par minuter. Jag stod där med mina bara fötter i det varma gräset och kände mig gränslöst sorgsen. Helt plötsligt kände jag mig sorgsen över alla oss människor, som om jag med ens hade förts upp i himlen och likt en allvetande berättare i en artonhundratalsroman satt och tittade ner på spektaklet med mänsklighetens bristfälligheter och önskade att saker och ting kunde vara annorlunda för att bespara en del av oss lite smärta här och där …"

Exakt så kände, och fortfarande känner, jag inför boken. Det var en mycket känslosam resa från början till slut. En resa som jag skulle kunna göra om och om igen om jag bara finge läsa något så här underbart igen.(less)

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Sep 30, 2012 Ricky rated it 2 of 5 stars

The Summer Without Men sounds girly, doesn’t it? It reminds me of the line from the film Miss Congeniality, “Chick flick, didn’t see it”.

Would a man want to read this? Probably not. A man probably did, however, since the author Siri Hustvedt is married to Paul Auster. One would assume, two writers living in a Manhattan apartment with a kid, that they probably spend their evenings typing in separate alcoves before moving their laptops out of the way and pulling out the Murphy bed. Auster probably...more The Summer Without Men sounds girly, doesn’t it? It reminds me of the line from the film Miss Congeniality, “Chick flick, didn’t see it”.

Would a man want to read this? Probably not. A man probably did, however, since the author Siri Hustvedt is married to Paul Auster. One would assume, two writers living in a Manhattan apartment with a kid, that they probably spend their evenings typing in separate alcoves before moving their laptops out of the way and pulling out the Murphy bed. Auster probably at least picked up the manuscript in order to get to the pile of laundry found underneath it. (I don’t know why, but I can’t imagine anyone being able to afford anything bigger than 20m2 in Manhattan, which limits how well I can picture Paul and Siri’s home life.) In addition, having spent so much time with Paul Auster in his apartment (since he rarely writes about anything else), I feel like I’m personally acquainted with the dust bunnies under the fridge.

I was never acquainted with his wife, however. I assumed from her name that she was some Scandinavian author, riding on the success of Steig Larsson. As this is coming from someone named “Ericka Olsen”, I should know better. We Scandinavians were not very adventurous in the United States. We moved from the flat woods of Sweden, Norway and Finland to the flat woods of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Illinois. No pining for pines for us.

Ms. Hustvedt is from Minnesota, and has had a long career as a writer. The novel in question, The Summer Without Men, is her fifth. She also writes poetry and non-fiction, and has a PhD from Columbia, the one I cough and try to pretend I went to; she went to the real university in New York, not Columbia College in Chicago which, while being a perfectly good school (the rub is found in “perfectly”), is not nearly of the same class as Columbia University.

The “plot”: a woman moves back home to Minnesota from New York because her husband is seeing someone else. The affair caused her to have a breakdown, and she needs building up from the warm, intelligent community of women she forms instantaneously upon her arrival. And it works. Yeah.

Although it is a chick lit book, it’s for intelligent, nay pretentious chicks. The main character quotes poetry, so we feel smart. She speaks of her temporary madness, so we feel empathy. She has friends with women of all ages.

And that seems to be the (only) point. Women can have friends of all ages. Take out the “wo” from the “men”, and it become universal and interesting. Add the “wo” to “men” and it becomes click lit.
Too bad. I sort of liked it. (less)

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Aug 25, 2012 Tiina Suvanto rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Olen syvästi ilahtunut Siri Hustvedtin tavasta kirjoittaa.

Otin naistenkeskeisen lomareissun lukemiseksi Hustvedtin Kesän ilman miehiä, ja sinnehän se sopi erinomaisesti, aurinkovarjon alle viihdyttämään.

Humoristisesti ja ironisesti kirjoitettu romaani alkaa päähenkilön joutumisella viikoksi suljetulle osastolle. Tämä johtuu akuutista stressihäiriöstä, jonka aiheuttajana on hänen miehensä Boriksen toive pitää paussia heidän liitostaan - huomattavasti nuoremman ranskattaren seurassa. Dramaattise...more

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Jul 17, 2012 Elise rated it 3 of 5 stars

A nice short book which I picked up because of it's lovely cover, believing the premise to be "woman becomes crazy after her husband leaves her." While the book turned out to be about much more, it sometimes becomes paraphrased when you need detail most, and at other times turns into an essay.

The Summer Without Men focuses on the lives of several women around Mia, all at different stages in their lives. The sad realities of becoming old are a very interesting point of the book, and the stories o...more

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Jun 30, 2012 Lily You rated it 3 of 5 stars

I was searching between the lines hints of a possible realization which I had come to myself. She never spells it out. However, I was glad to find that she, with her truthful description of her struggle with the same old questions that baffle each and every newly broken heart, has noticed in herself the strength that every person has.

What caught my attention was the name of the book, "The Summer without Men." I thought this may be helpful to the girl friend of mine who had been going through a...more

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Feb 22, 2012 Zornitsa rated it 1 of 5 stars

Подходих към книгата съвсем добронамерено, защото "Какво обичах" ми беше харесала (но пък кое ли не изглежда по-добре, когато го четеш по време на деветчасово пътуване с автобус!).
От "Лятото без мъже" ми стана някак обидно - не толкова заради баналния сюжет (пренебрегната жена на средна възраст успява да се почувства щастлива без мъжа си, като заздравява връзката си с майка си и други жени от различни поколения, задължително намесени ръкоделие и поезия или живопис, после мъжът й се връща гузен-г...more Подходих към книгата съвсем добронамерено, защото "Какво обичах" ми беше харесала (но пък кое ли не изглежда по-добре, когато го четеш по време на деветчасово пътуване с автобус!).
От "Лятото без мъже" ми стана някак обидно - не толкова заради баналния сюжет (пренебрегната жена на средна възраст успява да се почувства щастлива без мъжа си, като заздравява връзката си с майка си и други жени от различни поколения, задължително намесени ръкоделие и поезия или живопис, после мъжът й се връща гузен-гузен), колкото заради предполагаемите маркери за висок стил, с които книгата е окичена като ученически лексикон - със стикери.
Да вземем например речникът. Да се използват редки думи е, разбира се, похвално, но когато не влизат в особена хармония помежду си - и със смисъла на разказваното, - те изглеждат не като витраж, а като шарени стъкълца, откраднати от сврака. Същото се отнася за имената на философите, които би трябвало да ни уверят в дълбочината на познанията било на героинята, било на авторката. То не беше Хусерл, то не беше Ясперс, то не беше Мерло-Понти - всичките призовани да покажат как 'the lady poet' всъщност е подсказала на съпруга си важни неща за неговите изследвания върху неврологията на плъховете. Я пак?
(Разбира се, задължително споменаваният от нечелите всъщност философия Кант също присъства - като фон за постна свалка от студентските години на героинята).

Нивото на предсказуемост е застрашително. Каква е по националност съперницата на главната героиня? Французойка. Защо се разпада извънбрачната връзка? Заради реалността на неизмитите чинии. Какъв е основният недостатък на съпруга? Ах, ах, емоционално остранение. Защо си е избрала такъв мъж? Защото баща й бил същия. Кое момиче ще се окаже жертва на лошите шеги на съученичките си? Плахото с богатия речник. И т.н.

Тъпо и обидно - виждала съм откровен чиклит без толкова дрънкулки (и без Мерло-Понти!), но пък с опит за наистина различен сюжет. (less)

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Feb 12, 2012 ayrdaomei rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to ayrdaomei by: Library staff

Shelves: finished

This was an interesting read. After 30 years of marriage, Narrator Mia's husband has told her he is having affair, and he thinks it would be good for them to take a "pause". After an emotional/mental breakdown, Mia leaves New York and retreats to the small mid-Western town where she grew up, to spend the summer taking stock. At first alone, she is slowly drawn back into the world and into the lives of the people around her: the neighbor with the angry when home but mostly absent husband, the wom...more

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Feb 09, 2012 Karen Leopoldina rated it 2 of 5 stars

Predictably, given Hustvedt's stature in the literary community, this novel has garnered extremely favourable reviews. Unfortunately, the novel itself does not live up to the hyperbole. The work of some authors you just really want to like. For me, Hustvedt is one of these. She can write well, she occasionally takes 'risks' (or what seem like them), and she is erudite and self-effacing in person (ok, i heard her read and talk once, and i was swooning).
The narrator of this novel, Mia Frederickson...more Predictably, given Hustvedt's stature in the literary community, this novel has garnered extremely favourable reviews. Unfortunately, the novel itself does not live up to the hyperbole. The work of some authors you just really want to like. For me, Hustvedt is one of these. She can write well, she occasionally takes 'risks' (or what seem like them), and she is erudite and self-effacing in person (ok, i heard her read and talk once, and i was swooning).
The narrator of this novel, Mia Frederickson, is an award-winning poet and successful academic who tumbles into a temporary madness when her neuroscientist husband Boris surprises her with his request for a marital pause. The pause, of course, "was French with limp but shiny brown hair" and "significant breasts that were real."
The novel starts well with an emotionally raw writing style – laced with a bitter humour – that seemingly holds no punches. The immediacy of the writing directly engages the reader but somehow it just doesn't hold together and my attention pretty quickly began to wander and interest wane. To recover from her psychological meltdown, the narrator decamps to the country to live near her mother and take a poetry class for adolescent girls. And so begins her 'summer without men'. The novel is peopled with a variety of girls and women who all rather obviously represent various aspects of contemporary female experience. Yet increasingly, the characters she encounters and what we learn about their lives seems increasingly contrived and artificial. There are some great scenes and moments of writing – particularly when dealing with women and ageing – but they are not enough to sustain the novel.
For me the biggest problem of this novel was that the privileged life of the narrator remains unexamined and unacknowledged. The choices available to her as a white, middle-class, successfully employed professional are just not available to the majority of women who find themselves in Mia's predicament. Hustvedt has chosen to write this novel in first person which, while imbuing the novel with immediacy, also limits the reader's access to other points of view. If the book had been either written in third person, or if other characters' perspectives had been included (Boris, the errant husband could have been interesting or his new girlfriend etc), then there is a potential for drawing attention to unreliability of all first-person narrations and perhaps working to undercut the 'precious' tone of the book.
Instead, we are submitted to Mia's endless digressions about her life, her marriage, her opinions which increasingly distanced me as a reader. Hustvedt just tries too hard, and many of the scenes become almost 'set pieces' to illustrate some other aspect of contemporary womanhood. The most engaging character in the novel for me is the four year old daughter of her new neighbour Lola. The writing describing her interactions with both the child (and often, her mother) were invariably warm and fresh, with none of the self-conscious archness that marred other scenes.
While ultimately i was disappointed with the novel i did enjoy Hustvedt's playing with form and her use of a variety of writing styles: incorporating poetry (sometimes bad), drawings, emails etc. But did this make me 'care' about the narrator and her travails? Unfortunately, not a jot.(less)

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Dec 11, 2011 Lil rated it 5 of 5 stars

Another great book from Siri.

Favourite quotes:
p.22 "To distract herself from her husband abandoning her, she begins to record her earliest sexual feelings and events."

She didn't get very far with these records, but it was an amusing idea.

p. 25 [re. the protagonist's mother] "Although age had shrunk her, it had also intensified her, as if the lack of remaining time had had the effect of stripping away all fat -- both physical and mental"

p. 65 "Perception is never passive. We are not only receiver...more

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Aug 28, 2011 Erin rated it 4 of 5 stars

I hadn't read anything of Siri Hustvedt's since The Blindfold, which I remember liking a lot, but somehow I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this. The premise is simple: Mia retreats to the country town of her upraising for a summer following the mental breakdown that followed her husband's affair. A la "The Women," men are talked about and even emailed but never seen or directly heard. In the meanwhile, Mia communes with her elderly mother, her sister, a neighbor with marital problems of her...more

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Aug 19, 2011 Carol rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Carol by: my mother-in-law

The summer referenced in the title refers to the time spent by the narrator in her small Minnesota hometown, trying to come to terms with her husband's recent infidelity back in New York City. The women she spends time with include her elderly mother and her closest friends, a young neighbor with two small children and an abusive husband, and a group of middle school girls taking a poetry class. The narration is filled with the raw pain and shock of dealing with betrayal after thirty years of ma...more

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Aug 08, 2011 SwensonBooks rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: danielle

Don’t let the jacket copy and title fool you. No chick lit fodder beckons in Siri Hustvedt’s newest fiction: The Summer Without Men (Picador, April 26, 2011).

The antics of Mia Fredrickson’s young and turbulent neighbors, the adolescent girls in her poetry workshop, and her mother’s senior circle composed of the wise and nurturing “Five Swans” provides the context for deep intellectual passages and keeps The Summer Without Men light enough for summer reading lists. Mia is one of those intelligent...more Don’t let the jacket copy and title fool you. No chick lit fodder beckons in Siri Hustvedt’s newest fiction: The Summer Without Men (Picador, April 26, 2011).

The antics of Mia Fredrickson’s young and turbulent neighbors, the adolescent girls in her poetry workshop, and her mother’s senior circle composed of the wise and nurturing “Five Swans” provides the context for deep intellectual passages and keeps The Summer Without Men light enough for summer reading lists. Mia is one of those intelligent, literary characters typically associated with Austen. The humor of the Rolling Meadows Book Club reading Persuasion – for which Mia agrees to moderate – does not escape me. This is the type of keen eye Hustvedt expects of her readers and I found myself pleased that I was able to keep up.

I welcome a female character who is honest and unabashed about the wealth of intelligence she possesses. Mia does not dumb down for her audience. Mia inspires me to run out to the nearest bookstore or library and follow-up on her recommendations. A fictional character advising readers on real books and authors. Promoting readership inside the fiction. I can’t help but imagine Mia as a loose projection of Hustvedt herself. Dangerous territory for a reader, I know. But Mia – nay, Hustvedt – invites this type of questioning within the pages:

"And the pen, as it were, Dear Reader, is now in my hand, and I am claiming the advantage, taking it for myself, for you will notice that the written word hides the body of the one who writes. For all you know, I might be a MAN in disguise. Unlikely, you say, with all this feminist prattle flying out here and there and everywhere, but can you be sure?"

Mia’s voice is full of poetic and robust language. She is sophisticated and precise. (I seethe inwardly every time she uses words like “cabal”, “ululation”, “quiescence”, and “splenetic” and wish I could get away with using them myself. Jealous of a fictional being, you ask? How absurd. But true!) She rambles and rages, revealing hypersensitive neuroses. She sprouts poetry because she is a poet – some her own, some quoted. She references intellectual giants comfortably. The fictional Mia embarrasses me but does not shame me: to whom is she referring? (Curse you, Seattle Board of Education, for not requiring high school classes on Derrida, Kierkegaard, Freud, Pound, Hopkins, Rabelais, Swift, Plath, and Sexton, among others less familiar!)

Mia is, in short, a delightfully strong female character. She is an academic emerging from the clutches of a mental breakdown and reeling from the impending actualities of menopause and divorce. She retreats to the Minnesota home of her mother, shielding herself with estrogen and poetry. The Summer Without Men is neither angry diatribe nor revelatory personal awakening. The book is a healing, a breath, a “pause” on life in its own right. One moment Mia feels and questions too much all the time and the social dynamics of her middle-school girl students feel too palatable. The next she launches into a verse on Columbus and the clitoris, without forgetting to trumpet a song for feminists on the inaccuracies constructed by human history’s illustriously suppressive stenographers – those white European males of supposed antiquity. Yet who can deem this protagonist unsavory when she determinedly asks, “Doesn’t the seventeenth-century use of the measurement yard for penis strike you as a bit of an exaggeration, unless the yard then was not the yard now?”

Not I. And certainly not you, dear reader, whom she lovingly addresses and caresses in brief asides. Blame a girl for appreciating a little fictive loving, a few narrative embraces.

Hustvedt is a writer possessed with the remarkable ability of transforming an overdone tale of marital separation and female self-reflection with political, social and cultural discourses on love and marriage, women and girls, the question of sameness and difference between the sexes, and history and memory. She invites postmodern questions on the nature of authority, fiction and construction as the reader follows a middle-aged academic recovering from separation (the ominous Pause) and subsequent admission into a psychiatric ward.(less)

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Aug 06, 2011 Christian Hanne rated it 1 of 5 stars

Is it the worst book I have ever read? No, I read worse books – but a very long time ago. After being left by her husband after about 30 years of marriage for a – what she calls – PAUSE the narrator had a mental breakdown and was briefly institutionalized. I mean, WTF, kick him in the ass (or somewhere else) instead of even taking him back in the end (oops, spoiler). While I probably should pity her for her burden I consider the narrator to be one of the most arrogant, narcisstic and dislikable...more

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Jul 19, 2011 Sandra rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Lovers of literature

I really enjoyed this book. Although slim there is a lot packed into the story. Mia is a New York poet whose husband of over 30 years requests 'a pause' so he can pursue a relationship with a younger, French, colleague. Devastated, Mia has a temporary breakdown and once judged well enough returns to Minnesota to her hometown. There she is able to spend time with her mother and her mother's friends (the Swans), teach a poetry class to 7 teenagers and find friendship with her next door neighbour.

T...more

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Jul 07, 2011 Ing rated it 2 of 5 stars

I started this book with the feeling that I would enjoy it a lot. I didn't. It's not a bad novel and I can certainly see how many people enjoy it, but the problem for me was that the characters felt like they weren't fleshed out enough. I didn't get a connection to Mia as the main character. I thought the widows has potential to be interesting, but too little attention was paid to them to make me truly connect. I thought that the young girls in the poetry class were the ones that were characteri...more

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Jun 30, 2011 Venessa rated it 5 of 5 stars

"Shorn of intimacy and seen from a considerable distance, we are all comic characters, farcical buffoons who bumble through our lives, making fine messes as we go, but when you get close, the ridiculous quickly fades into the sordid or the tragic or the merely sad."

Wonderful book. Beautiful writing: it took me two days to read it because I reread many sentences two or more times. I read this during my slow reading of Hustvedt's The Shaking Woman which led me to be confused at times since both th...more

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Jun 26, 2011 Rachel rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I would rate this book three and a half stars but GoodReads doesn't have half stars.

One day Mia Fredrickson’s husband Boris tells her that he wants to take a “pause” after thirty years of marriage. This sends Mia into a tailspin and she ends up in a psychiatric hospital. After her release, she moves into a rented house for the summer in the same town where her mother lives in a retirement home. She spends time with her mother and her friends, her neighbor and her two small children and the seven...more

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Jun 05, 2011 Laura Roberts rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

Capsule review: I'd never read anything by Siri Hustvedt before, though I quite enjoy her husband Paul Auster's books. I won a free copy of this book from GoodReads, and was glad I had a chance to read the book, which is quite different from Auster's take on the world. A spurned wife has a minor melt-down when her husband wants a "pause" from their marriage, ending up briefly in a mental institution, and then moving back to her small hometown to be close to her elderly mother and the group of el...more

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May 21, 2011 Kristin rated it 2 of 5 stars

This is the first "adult" book I've read since being in YA class. "The Summer without Men" is written by an author who has a PhD in English Literature, and the main character is an English professor and poet. What does this mean to the novel? Well, it means that the main character/narrator's voice is elevated to heights so great that a person needs to read the novel with dictionary in hand, and Google within her sights. The story is simple - a poet and a "world-famous neuroscientist" have been m...more

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May 20, 2011 Edel rated it 4 of 5 stars

Siri Hustvedt's newest book is a somewhat light concoction -- which I thoroughly enjoyed. The plot summary has been given in a number of other reviews, so let me approach the book from a slightly different angle. Although it is called "The Summer without Men", men do play an important role albeit often with their absence. Two main groups of actors, each divided into two sub-groups, deal with relationship issues. First there are the two circles: the older "swans" (post-men) at the end of their li...more

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Apr 14, 2011 Felicity rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book is brilliant. Siri Hustvedt is not about to hit my list of favorite authors (I've read some of her other stuff, but can't remember it at all) but this book is about to hit my list of top-ten best books of all time (OK, maybe that's a list of twenty books. But you get my drift...) Why? This is a novel. I sat there with a pencil and I have marked up and dog-eared pages of this slim volume simply so that I can go back and wallow in the pleasure of reading some of Hustvedt's elegant senten...more This book is brilliant. Siri Hustvedt is not about to hit my list of favorite authors (I've read some of her other stuff, but can't remember it at all) but this book is about to hit my list of top-ten best books of all time (OK, maybe that's a list of twenty books. But you get my drift...) Why? This is a novel. I sat there with a pencil and I have marked up and dog-eared pages of this slim volume simply so that I can go back and wallow in the pleasure of reading some of Hustvedt's elegant sentences again and again. I have never done that with any book of fiction I have read. The premise is simple. I'll give it away now, because any other review will do so and the author lets you know the premise in the first two pages (indeed, she does so in the book blurb). The premise: Mia's husband of 20+ years, Boris, announces one night that he wishes to take a "pause" in their marriage. He is seeing someone else. He doesn't want to lave Mia. He just wants to enjoy a "pause." Mia has a breakdown (of sorts...very scantily covered in the book), and the "action" of the book (such as it) takes place in the prairie town of Mia's childhood, to which Mia retreats while she recovers.

Boris's actions inspire sentences such as this: "The Pause was French with limp but shiny brown hair." Hustvedt's observations upon aging are similarly heartbreaking (don't read this if you're feeling down).

Almost finally, beware the title. Men, namely Boris, generate the central crisis of this novel: he places Mia where she is (the prairie), and all of the "action"--primarily interactions with females of different ages-- is refracted through the lens of Mia's fraught relationship with her husband. So men are central to this novel even if the title suggests that is not so. Even so, the novel is a testament to the strength of women and of female relationships.

And finally, one of my favorite excerpts from the novel (pp.126-127):

In 1873, Dr. Edward Clarke, following the noble Beard, published a book with a friendly title: "Sex in Education: A Fair Chance for Girls," in which he argued that menstruating girls should be banned from the classroom and cited hard evidence from clinical studies conducted at HARVARD on intellectual women which had determined that too much knowledge had made these poor creatures sterile, anemic, hysterical, and even mad. Maybe that was my problem [observed Mia]. I read too much, and my brain exploded.

Keep reading! And read this!

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Mar 02, 2011 Jill rated it 3 of 5 stars

Mia Frederickson, an award-winning poet in midlife, tumbles into a temporary madness when her husband Boris surprises her with his request for a marital pause. The pause, of course, "was French with limp but shiny brown hair" and "significant breasts that were real."

So starts this mordant comedy from Siri Hustvedt, a novelist of considerable talent. Mia finds herself eventually caught between a continuum of women -her mother and the other octogenarian widows whom she promptly dubs "the five swan...more Mia Frederickson, an award-winning poet in midlife, tumbles into a temporary madness when her husband Boris surprises her with his request for a marital pause. The pause, of course, "was French with limp but shiny brown hair" and "significant breasts that were real."

So starts this mordant comedy from Siri Hustvedt, a novelist of considerable talent. Mia finds herself eventually caught between a continuum of women -her mother and the other octogenarian widows whom she promptly dubs "the five swans" on one end, and the seven catty adolescent girls who compose her poetry class on the other.

As Mia gingerly and then firmly enters her "summer without men", she strives to emerge from the overbearing shadow of Boris, whose "pause", predictably, is not much more than that. It's a good conceit but somehow, it just doesn't come together.

The consortium of women are difficult to keep straight. The young girls never emerge as individuals; the whole really is bigger than the sum of the parts. Ditto for the "five swans" ,who all seem to be part of one big geriatric "whole." There are some scenes that shine; for example, Abigail, one of the elderly women, reveals embroideries that are actually private amusements, little scenes within scenes. "They don't see it, you know," Abigail stroked a hearing aid cord as she tilted her head. "Most of them. They see only when they expect to see, sugar, not spice, if you comprehend my meaning."

Unfortunately, though, for this reader, those scenes were few and far between, although the good ones are worth their weight in gold. Unlike other books of Ms. Hustvedt, the writing seems just a bit too self-conscious and contrived. There is not a two-dimensional quality in Mia (an anagram for "I am"), the off-stage Boris, or the other leading characters. Despite the insertions of good-and-bad poetry, quirky drawings, and literary allusions and references, there is a distancing quality that never allowed me to embrace Mia or her plight. I was primed to like The Summer Without Men, but in the end, simply could not suspend belief.
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Mar 29, 2013 Rhena rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: my-favorites

Originally posted on Snapshot Inkblot Whatnot

Even before I had a copy of any book by Siri Hustvedt, I was already keen on liking her prose mainly because Bennard said I would love her. Which, for all I know, is a contrived effort to make Hustvedt my new favorite author--Hustvedt that is wife to Paul Auster, one of Bennard's favorites. Well, planned or not, it appears that he is right. I loved Hustvedt instantly, the love-at-first-few-pages kind.

Aside from being my first novel by new favorite aut...more Originally posted on Snapshot Inkblot Whatnot

Even before I had a copy of any book by Siri Hustvedt, I was already keen on liking her prose mainly because Bennard said I would love her. Which, for all I know, is a contrived effort to make Hustvedt my new favorite author--Hustvedt that is wife to Paul Auster, one of Bennard's favorites. Well, planned or not, it appears that he is right. I loved Hustvedt instantly, the love-at-first-few-pages kind.

Aside from being my first novel by new favorite author, The Summer Without Men is also my first contemporary feminist book. And a memorable one at that. The characters are mainly women--Mia the Awesome Protagonist, the Swans in Rolling Meadows, the teen witches of Bonden, Lola the Neighbor-turned-Friend, Bea the Tough Sister, and Daisy the Lively Daughter. Even psychiatrist Dr. S. is a female! They were not portrayed as perfect, all-knowing, and righteous--it wouldn't be realistic if they were, and I would've disliked the book if such was the case--but as strong personalities who accepted life's blows and dealt with them in ways they know best. Men were present in the story too, but they are more of a backdrop, appearing in recollections, letters, and in the periphery. In this book, men were depicted as both the storm and the cooling rain. The storm that some women must weather through in order to be stronger, wiser. The cooling rain that soothes and comforts, the reason for a smile.

Siri Hustvedt gets me. On how exactly, I am fumbling to figure out.

Maybe it's because of Mia Fredricksen's sense of humor and her use of capital letters/proper nouns to address people, even herself. She can be self-deprecating, and this knowledge of her flaws makes her ridiculing of other characters, like Boris or the Pause, acceptable. Heck, she was betrayed, resulting to brief psychosis, so she had every right to "eviscerate them in fiction." Despite all these hurts she endured and the slow process she underwent to recover, Boris, "the wayward husband," remained dear to her and passed on this contagious feeling to me, the Reader. At the end of the day, I still rooted for them to get back together. The wooing back part was minimalist in words, and yet I found myself stifling giggles as if what I am reading is a chick lit for teens instead of an extinguished-and-reignited love story of a middle-aged couple.

Maybe it's the numerous subtopics included in the book. These were meant to be Mia's diversions, her observations, her memories and internal conflicts. And yet, I was permitted to eavesdrop. Brilliant Hustvedt also used this to air her own thoughts. On philosophy, poetry, psychology, and evolution. On the prevalent mediocrity and perverse anti-intellectual culture. On vulnerability of childhood and fragility of old age. Even on sex and seduction. Mia tackled all these succinctly. She didn't dwell, but she also gave resolutions to all. Well, at least for me there was closure. What I got by the end of the book was way more that what I signed up for. So yeah, Zeitgeist fulfilled!

Maybe it's her style, in general. Her tone, her choice of words, her brevity and yet vivid imagery. Or her characters? Yes, her colorful characters and the way I could relate with some of them as if they too had been living my life all along. It's also her unpredictability. You might disagree with me and tell me that there are quite a handful of other writers who can outclass Hustvedt if only in terms of this criterion, but do know that I haven't read a lot of books yet. Let us leave this as my first discovery.

Siri Hustvedt gets me. On how exactly? You got your answer. This review of The Summer Without Men should be more aptly titled Siri Hustvedt Appreciation Post.(less)

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