Essays

Considering the attention and praise Siri Hustvedt's novels have received, I was surprised that this book was published almost invisibly a year ago. I just discovered Yonder a few weeks ago (mid-1999) and haven't found any reviews of it outside of the trades -- which is unfortunate, since I'm pretty sure that fans of her novels (as well as Auster's novels) would enjoy these essays if they knew the book existed at all. Yonder's a quick but memorable read -- Hustvedt's essays focus on the same preoccupations as her novels: the parallel worlds of language and experience; defining self and landscape through absence and presence; etc. Best are the title essay and the other personal/autobiographical essays -- the literary essays (on Dickens and Fitzgerald) are less compelling but still have some memorable parts. I enjoyed Yonder as much as I did The Blindfold, both for its clear style and its ideas. At its best, the essays in Yonder are freed from the constraints of fiction, presenting compelling ideas and resonant images in a compact, finely made form.