Siri Hustvedt - Writing Style and Themes

Writing Style and Themes

Siri Hustvedt’s works repeatedly pose questions about the nature of identity, selfhood and perception. In The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves, an interdisciplinary account of her own seizure disorder, Hustvedt states her need to view her symptom not “through a single window” but “from all angles.” These multiple perspectives do not resolve themselves into a single view but rather create an atmosphere of ambiguity and flux. Hustvedt presents the reader with characters whose minds are inseparable from their bodies and their environments and whose sense of self is situated on the threshold between the conscious and unconscious. Her characters often suffer traumatic events that disrupt the rhythms of their lives and lead to disorientation and a discontinuity of their identities. Hustvedt’s concern with embodied identity manifests itself in her investigation of gender roles and interpersonal relations. Both her fiction and nonfiction highlight dynamics of the gaze and questions of ethical representation in the visual arts.

An example of crossover to her husband's work, Auster used Iris, the narrator of Hustvedt's first novel, The Blindfold, in his novel Leviathan.