The Summer without Men by Siri Hustvedt: discover one of our favourite summer book!

Mia Fredrickson, the tragicomic poet narrator of The Summer Without Men, has been forced to reexamine her own life. One day, out of the blue, after thirty years of marriage, Mia’s husband, a renowned neuroscientist, asks her for a “pause.” This abrupt request sends her reeling and lands her in a psychiatric ward. The June following Mia’s release from the hospital, she returns to the prairie town of her childhood, where her mother lives in an old people’s home. Alone in a rented house, she rages and fumes and bemoans her sorry fate. Slowly, however, she is drawn into the lives of those around her.

From the bestselling author of «What I Loved», comes this provocative and revelatory novel.

At 55 Mia is still «just a child» to the residents of her mother’s sheltered apartments, women who have outlived their spouses and are now navigating a long winter without men. As she looks ahead to old age, Mia relives stages of her life through the girls and women she comes across. Memories of childhood are awoken by Flora, the toddler next door with the imaginary friend. Flora’s mother Lola and baby brother bring back the sensuous bliss of the newborn. Mia is waking up to the world again, and to the fullness of her own interior life. Even summer storms bring back the «great winds» of her childhood, seen through a child’s unjaded eyes: «I remembered the immensity of the world.»

The book contains many useful things. A short course on creative writing, highlights of Socratic thought, a history of ideas of sexual difference. A reading group guide to Jane Austen and a demolition of evolutionary biology. Particular pleasure is to be found in the «secret amusements» of Mia’s mother’s friend Abigail. She is the queen of embroidery. For decades she has concealed her real artwork within apparently conventional craft objects. Hustvedt describes these subversive images with the same panache she brought to the many artworks invented in What I Loved.