Caught between a New Age rock and a theory junkie hard place

Siri Hustvedt’s new novel isn’t exactly an easy read — but the casual bookshop browser should be reassured that it’s nowhere near as punishing as the opening pages might suggest. In the ‘editor’s introduction’ we’re told that what follows is an anthology of writings by and about the late artist Harriet Burden — known to friends as Harry — with her own contributions taken from a series of notebooks labelled by letters of the alphabet:

Notebook H, on Edmund Husserl, has pages on Husserl’s idea about ‘the intersubjective constitution of objectivity’ and the consequences of such an idea on the natural sciences… Q is devoted to quantum theory and its possible use for a theoretical model of the brain.

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Lucy Letby and the killer nurse I worked with

At this point, even the most high-minded of book-lovers may feel in no rush to read on.