Anna Aslanyan

Writing as exorcism

It’s not the past that shapes you, but your understanding of it, is the theme of this memoir disguised as a novel

issue 23 March 2019

Why are people interested in their past? One possible reason is that you can interact with it, recruiting it as an agent of the present and the future. Siri Hustvedt’s novel, masked as a memoir, suggests you should rely not so much on your recollection of particular events as on your ability to interpret them, which can produce something truer than bare facts.

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