Mothers, Fathers, and Others

In her most intimate and probing collection of essays yet, Siri Hustvedt moves effortlessly between stories of her mother, grandmother and daughter, artistic mothers such as Emily Bronte and Louise Bourgeois, and the broader meanings of the maternal in a culture shaped by misogyny and fantasies of paternal authority.

A polymath’s journey into urgent questions about familial love and hate, human prejudice and cruelty, and the transformative power of art, this invigorating book explores the boundaries we usually take for granted – between ourselves and others, nature and nurture, viewer and artwork – which are far less stable than we imagine. Ultimately, it is about the dangers of drawing hard and fast borders where none exist.