“After she moved to Brooklyn, my mother collected strays — human strays, not animals. every time I went to visit her, there seemed to be another “assistant,” poet, drifter, or just plain charity case living in one of the rooms, and i worried they might take advantage of her, rob her, or even kill her in her sleep.”

Book Review:

Review by Betsey Van Horn  (MAR 30, 2014)

Harriet “Harry” Burden was an obscurely known artist for much of her life, and also a wife, mother, and scholar. She was criticized for her small architectural works that consisted of too much busyness–cluttered with figures and text that didn’t fit into any schema. Her husband, Felix Lord, was an influential, successful art collector, but who couldn’t help his wife for alleged fear of nepotism. After Felix died, Harriet came back with a vengeance, and under three male artist’s pseudonyms (artists that she sought out), she created a combination art (part performance, if you consider the pseudonyms as part of the process) a trilogy which was successful, and even more lauded posthumously. They were shown individually under the names of “The History of Western Art, ” “The Suffocation Rooms,” and “Beneath.” Later, when unmasked (so to speak), they were identified as Maskings. I am reluctant to reduce and categorize Harriet–although labels such as “feminist” may apply.

Harriet wanted to:

“…uncover the complex workings of human perception and how unconscious ideas about gender, race, and celebrity influence a viewer’s understanding of a given work of art.”

Moreover, it is about unmasking ourselves–which includes the hermaphroditic selves. We are all an amalgam of male and female, or male and female perceptions and the plurality — attributed behaviors. There’s seepage beyond the paradigm.

Again, that may be too reductionist for the complex workings of Harry’s art, and of her psychology and her life. This novel is like an exposé of Harriet’s life, as told via her friends, colleagues, children (including one passage by her son, who suffered from Asperger’s), lover (her significant other after Felix’s death), critics, roommates, and herself. The chapters by Harriet come from her private notebooks/diaries, labeled by letters of the alphabet, and found after her death.

One could call this a presentation novel — a novel that appears more as a collection of writings that make up her life, replete with footnotes. Included are esoteric and big ideas about art, art movements, and philosophy. However, Hustvedt is such a spectacular writer, that it feels very much like a biography, and often an autobiography (sometimes reliable, at other times unreliable — you as reader decide). Hustvedt combines big ideas with story. There are novels, such as written by David Foster Wallace, Richard Powers, and others, who are famous for this style. The novelist Nicholas Mosley writes his story and characters as subservient to the big ideas. This alienates some readers. It is purely subjective to taste, but, personally, I love a cleavage of ideas and story/character. In my opinion, Hustvedt did a superb job of integrating the two. The character of Harriet was pervasive, even in the chapters that didn’t belong to her, because of her inimitable voice that saturated all others who populated the story. Harriet habituated these big ideas, so that it was organically composed.

Harry’s emotional and psychological presence was forceful, formidable. We learn that she saw a psychiatrist twice a week for the last eight years of her life, and her best friend was a psychotherapist. She was a dedicated wife to her husband and children, fraught over the secret life of her husband, and protective over the fragility of her son, Ethan. All vectors pointed back to Harriet–the enigma of her, and the magnitude of her vitality. She was ubiquitous in every page of this book.

I was familiar with some of the scholars/academics/artists/philosophers that Harriet mentioned due to other novels and books I had read. Parisian Guy Debord, leader of the Situationist International movement, had a prominent place in Billy Moon. The Situationists advanced the notion of the spectacularized–a mass consumerism where every experience is packaged by the market to be seductive and glamorous, and sooner or later, we experience the copy as an original experience rather than the experience itself — all is commodified. Harriet assimilated this philosophy (and others to demonstrate the conundrum of perception). One of Harriet’s favorite philosophers was the German, Edmund Husserl, who expounded on phenomenology, the study of the structures of experience and consciousness. It all ties into the assemblage of Harriet — like her art, she is made of many miniature selves that together form a whole. Or, perhaps, a panoply of selves.

And, most dear to Harry’s heart — perhaps her heroine — was Margaret Cavendish, a duchess and groundbreaking, prolific writer of science, predated science fiction, and a utopian romance called “A Blazing World,” from which the eponymous title of this novel originates. Cavendish died in obscurity, having published a memoir in which she yearns to one day be recognized. Hundreds of years after her death, her desire is realized. Is this a key to Harriet’s psyche?

One doesn’t have to be a scholar or artist to relate to this book. In fact, it is written in a highly accessible style, with a smoldering, emotional, and psychological expressiveness. In my opinion, this is a subtle meta-fiction — one that draws attention to itself as a work of art, while keys to the truth of Harriet Burden are revealed. As individuals, we all have our perception of quality and merit; therefore, readers will come away with our respective portraits of Harriet, and the thrumming purpose of her story. For fans of Siri Hustvedt, this is highly recommended. It equals the power of What I Loved, while being different in approach. Hustvedt has a nimble way of disclosing the incongruous features of her characters that make them both distinctive and sympathetic. By the end of this book, I could imagine a three-dimensional Harriet Burden walking out of the pages.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 7 readers
PUBLISHER:	Simon & Schuster (March 11, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Betsey Van Horn
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Siri Hustvedt
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Sorrows of an American

Bibliography:

• The Blindfold (1992)
• The Enchantment of Lily Dahl (1996)
• What I Loved (2003)
• The Sorrows of an American (2008)
• The Summer Without Men (2011)
• The Blazing World (March 2014)

Essays:

• A Plea for Eros (2005)
• Living, Thinking, Looking (2012)

“It is natural law that all complex systems move from a state of order to disorder. Stars decay, mountains erode, ice melts. People get off no easier. We get old or injured and inevitably slide right back into the elements we were first made from. The organized masterpiece of conception, birth, and maturation is really only two steps forward before three steps back, at least in the physical world. Sometimes when Charlotte lost a patient she thought about that and found it comforting—a reminder that she hadn’t failed in what was ultimately an unwinnable game. But if she thought about it too long, she had to wonder if her entire medical career was an interminable battle against the will of the universe.”

Book Review:

Review by Jana L. Perskie (MAR 3, 2014)

Gemini is an intensely absorbing novel which I found difficult to put down. It is a very human tale which delves deeply into subjects like love in its many shapes and forms, and time – too little time, not enough time, counting time, too late. The author, Carol Cassella, uses time to move her storyline back and forth in years, seamlessly weaving together the characters and the events which impact them.

The novel is narrated by two characters in alternating chapters: Raney, (Renee Lee Remington), an adolescent when the story begins, unfolds her life over the years. She is an illegitimate child, abandoned by her mother and birth father. Raney lives with her extremely eccentric grandfather, who adores her, in the small town of Quentin, WA, near Olympic National Park. He goes so far as to build an underground bunker, fully supplied for TEOTWAWKI, (“The End Of The World As We Know It).” Raney shows artistic promise at an early age and paints on plywood with house paint because she cannot afford canvas and oils. This girl/woman tells of her teenage friendship with Bo, a rich, awkward and shy boy from Seattle who is visiting his aunt for the summer while his parents are off somewhere getting a divorce.

Dr. Charlotte Reese, is a physician who specializes in the care and treatment of patients in intensive care at Beacon Hospital near Puget Sound, WA. She is a committed doctor, who cares deeply about her patients. Charlotte is in a long term relationship with Eric Bryson, a science journalist, who loves her but has a hard time committing to marriage and, eventually, to having children.

There is an important 3rd character here, one without a voice. Jane Doe.

Charlotte is on duty when a horribly injured woman is admitted to the hospital. It is 3:00 A.M. when the woman, whisked in a medivac helicopter to Beacon’s intensive care unit, is given into Charlotte’s care. As the patient has no identification on her she is tagged with the moniker of Jane Doe, until someone comes to claim her and provide the necessary background information. On arrival she has “no fewer than five tubes: one down her throat, another in her neck, two in her left arm, and one looping from her bladder. She arrives with a splint on her right arm, a scaffold of hardware stabilizing her lower right leg, and so much edema that her skin is pocked with the medics handprints.” She is the apparent victim of a hit and run. Her body was discovered by a truck driver who found her in a ditch beside the highway. He immediately called 911.

In the beginning Charlotte’s only goal is to keep her patient alive. Charlotte becomes deeply involved in solving the mystery of “Jane’s” identity and in locating her family. But as days and weeks pass, Jane Doe remains in a medically induced coma to allow her brain to heal while her body tries to heal itself also. Because her coma is medically induced it is impossible to test for brain death as it would involve removing her life support. So, the test would, in fact, kill her.

“Earlier Charlotte had had a conversation with her boyfriend, Eric, who’d more than once watched her throw the weight of modern medicine along with her single-minded will against all natural forces to keep a patient alive, only to lose in the end. Eric had challenged her on it that day. ‘Should quantity of life always trump quality? Maybe you set your goals too high.’ ‘”

When no one comes forward to give information about Jane Doe, an ethical and medical dilemma occurs. Ought “the plug be pulled.” Jane is assigned a professional guardian ad litem – someone to act on her behalf as her next of kin.

Gemini is set in a time of incredible medical technology, (late 1980s), when bodies can be kept breathing even when other physical functions are shutting down. New research in DNA testing and genetics began to emerge in 1985. Researchers did not understand until then exactly how traits were passed to the next generation. Genetics plays an important role here.

Gemini is filled with mysteries, so much so that I was kept guessing until the end…which is not predictable, at least not to me. There are family secrets, medical mysteries, and ethical dilemmas. The author carefully ties the characters and various storylines together and the complicated puzzle that involves the lives of Jane Doe and Charlotte Reese is originally resolved.

The title “Gemini” refers to the heavenly constellation of the same name. The star configuration is related to a Greek myth about the twin brothers Castor and Pollux. Both were mothered by Leda, but they had different fathers: In one night, Leda was made pregnant both by Jupiter in the form of a swan and by her husband, the king Tyndarus of Sparta. The most common explanation for their presence in the heavens is that Pollux was overcome with sorrow when his mortal brother died, and begged Jupiter to allow him to share his immortality. Jupiter, acknowledging the heroism of both brothers, consented and reunited the pair in the heavens.

I found this book to be one of the best I have read in years. The narrative just flows. I identified with the characters and the complexities of their relationships. I wouldn’t recommend it as a light beach read, however. Although not necessarily a “downer,” I found myself feeling terribly sad and thoughtful at times. But Gemini is about real life, and real life isn’t always an “upper.”

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 65 readers
PUBLISHER:	Simon & Schuster (March 4, 2014)
REVIEWER:	Jana L. Perskie
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Carol Cassella
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: Healer Oxygen

Bibliography:

• Oxygen (2008)
• Healer (2010)
• Gemini (March 2014)