What I Liked About "What I Loved"

I don't know how to write a review. The closest thing I've ever done is the super-over-analysis of novels I had to do so that I could walk across a stage and get my college diploma. But, you know, throw around a bunch of phrases like "stereotypical female gender roles" and "latent identity crisis," be diligent about grammar and punctuation, and you've got yourself an honors degree, folks. So, if I was in college, I might write a paper on the two young male characters in "What I Loved" by Siri Hustvedt. Why are their names so similar? Why are they so easy to confuse? Why do their paths take such drastic turns away from one another? Nature? Nurture? The role of the mother, the missing mother, the substitute mother. You get the picture.

But a review isn't a paper, is it? Of course not. So, what is there to say about this novel?

"What I Loved" is a novel of entwined families. What happens when two families share such similarities, interests, lives? When we have our children at the same time and we share time and parenting? Of course I thought of my same-same. If we were all out together, would anyone really know which child was mine and which was hers?

And I found myself pondering, what does it mean to integrate the lives of two families together? What are you promising to give and how much are you willing to take? How much, under certain circumstances, could I really love someone else's child? Could I really be there for someone else in the face of tragedy? Who would be there for me?

I enjoyed the novel. It was beautifully, poignantly written, written in a way where each word mattered, like each brushstroke of a painting matters. And that, I loved.