Longlisted for the 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence A provocative, exuberant novel about time, memory, desire, and the imagination from the internationally bestselling and prizewinning author of The Blazing World, Memories of the Future ...

Not many members of NUBClub had a chance to read Hustvedt's latest, but those of us that did were pleasently surprised by what we found. Given what we've read of her previously, we were expecting a complex and ambiguous work about complex social relationships. Instead we got a very meta story directly tackling the bias women face and a ton more witches than we bargained for. There was something quite nice about seeing Hustvedt hit issues of patriarchy and women's struggles head on in direct observation, and her choice of setting was terrific. The moment of New York she presents is compelling and rich. But more than anything else, Hustvedt paints a terrific picture of friendship. Paralleling the community of the narrator's small family with the coven of witches, and showing how those communities both protect their own in the idiosyncratic and flawed ways they do feel real and precious and touching. None of this would argue this was her greatest work of literature -- there just wasn't enough complexity in it to make it that rich -- but as a good read about reflecting on life experience and valuing relationships, it was worth the ride.