 First edition (US) | |
| Author | Siri Hustvedt |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster (US) Sceptre (UK) |
Memories of the Future is a 2019 novel by American writer Siri Hustvedt. The novel concerns a narrator, known as S.H. or by her nickname, "Minnesota", who discovers her journal from 40-years prior to the novel's events.
Hustvedt has said she "[...] actively [hoped] to undermine" the assumption that autobiographical fiction by women tends to be less imaginative than equivalent works by men. [1]
The novel contains autobiographical elements. [2] Writing for the New York Times , Judith Shulevitz referred to the novel as an example of autofiction. [2] The novel contains drawings by Hustvedt of several men, including Marcel Duchamp and Donald Trump. [1]
According to literary review aggregator Book Marks, the novel received mostly "Positive" reviews. [3] In a review for The Financial Times , Catherine Taylor compared the work to the "best" of the filmography of American director David Lynch. [4] Critics highlighted Hustvedt's depiction of New York City, with Sam Sacks crediting the depiction of S.H.'s relationship with a neighbor, Lucy, as accurate to the experience of living in a large city. [5] In her review for The Guardian , Sarah Crown praised the inclusion of the city, writing that Hustvedt "joyously depicts" New York as "hot, dirty and cacophonous". [6]
Writing for The Los Angeles Review of Books , Elena Goukassian compared Memories of the Future unfavorably to Hustvedt's debut novel, The Blindfold. [7] Goukassian praised The Blindfold for "leaving readers to draw [their] own conclusions" while writing that Memories of the Future "suffers from over-explanation". [7] Goukassian attributes this tendency to the "Trump era", during which she writes that there "[...] appears to be a wider trend among writers and artists of all kinds in creating works that drill their themes into the minds of their audiences". [7]
The novel was long-listed for the 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction. [8]
Paul Benjamin Auster is an American writer and film director. His notable works include The New York Trilogy (1987), Moon Palace (1989), The Music of Chance (1990), The Book of Illusions (2002), The Brooklyn Follies (2005), Invisible (2009), Sunset Park (2010), Winter Journal (2012), and 4 3 2 1 (2017). His books have been translated into more than forty languages.
Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison, known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987); she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
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Judith Krantz was a magazine writer and fashion editor who turned to fiction as she approached the age of 50. Her first novel Scruples (1978) quickly became a New York Times best-seller and went on to be a worldwide publishing success, translated into 50 languages. Scruples, which describes the glamorous and affluent world of high fashion in Beverly Hills, California, helped define a new supercharged sub-genre of the romance novel - the bonkbuster or "sex-and-shopping" novel. She also fundamentally changed the publishing industry by becoming one of the first celebrity authors through her extensive touring and promotion - "a superstar of fiction". Her later books included Princess Daisy (1980), Till We Meet Again (1988), Dazzle (1990) and Spring Collection (1996). Her autobiography, Sex and Shopping: The Confessions of a Nice Jewish Girl, was published in 2000.
Siri Hustvedt is an American novelist and essayist. Hustvedt is the author of a book of poetry, seven novels, two books of essays, and several works of non-fiction. Her books include The Blindfold (1992), The Enchantment of Lily Dahl (1996), What I Loved (2003), for which she is best known, A Plea for Eros (2006), The Sorrows of an American (2008), The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves (2010), The Summer Without Men (2011), Living, Thinking, Looking (2012), The Blazing World (2014), and Memories of the Future (2019). What I Loved and The Summer Without Men were international bestsellers. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages.
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