The summer without men : a novel

 by Siri Hustvedt. So traumatized is poet Mia when her neuroscientist husband of 30 years tells her that he needs a "paus" because he's smitten with a young colleague, she spends a brief spell in a psychiatric ward. Upon her release, she flees Brooklyn for he. backwate. hometown in Minnesota. It's good to see her mother, and meet her mother's friends, who are aging with various degrees of grace, denial, and suffering. Mia also teaches a poetry class for seventh-grade girls. The contrast Hustvedt draws between the solidarity of the women and the diabolical bullying of the hormone-riled girls is breathtaking in its insights into femaleness and age. And then there are Mia's penetrating, often hilarious musings on creativity, sparked, in part, by Abigail, who, over many years, has made a series of wildly subversive needlepoint designs, he. secret amusements. What joy to see Hustvedt, the author, heretofore, of such elegantly dark, labyrinthine novels as The Sorrows of an American (2008), have such mordant fun in this saucy and scathing novel about men and women, selfishness and generosity. In Mia, Hustvedt has created a companionable and mischievous narrator to cherish, a healthy-minded woman of high intellect, blazing humor, and boundless compassion. --Booklist (Check Catalog)