The circle of a lonely psychiatrist

Honor Clerk on Siri Hustvedt’s latest novel

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Rupert Darwall

Labour has walked into a net-zero trap of its own making

Born into a second generation Norwegian immigrant family, Erik Davidsen is a divorced New York psychoanalyst with his fair share of sorrows and with a close circle of relations and acquaintances who in turn have their sorrows too. He is a compassionate and sensitive man and the troubles of his family and of his patients are central to his thoughts. He is also lonely, and finds himself involuntarily saying so, out loud. His father has just died, his sister is recently widowed and her famous husband’s life is the subject of intrusive press speculation. Her daughter’s double bereavement is compounded by having witnessed events at the Twin Towers. Shot through his narrative is the story of his father’s life — a harsh rural Minnesota upbringing, haunting war service in the Far East and eventually a college professorship — told partly through a memoir and partly through enquiries that Erik and his sister make following the discovery of a cryptic note in their father’s desk.