There’s true pleasure in watching an accomplished
novelist skillfully create a multilayered story that combines
complex and intensely interesting characters with an absorbing
plot. In her latest novel, Siri Hustvedt has accomplished that task
with sensitivity and quiet passion.

Following the death of their elderly father, Lars Davidsen, a
history professor at a small Minnesota college, his children Erik,
a New York psychotherapist, and Inga, a cultural critic, find
themselves in the family home sifting through their father’s
papers. In the course of their search they encounter a letter dated
June 27, 1937 that states: “Dear Lars, I know you will never
ever say nothing about what happened. We swore it on the BIBLE. It
can’t matter now she’s in heaven or to the ones here on
earth. I believe in your promise. Lisa.” That discovery
launches the siblings on a quest to find the truth about the event
that prompted the cryptic message. While their patient
investigation eventually uncovers that truth, it’s only one
of several mysteries revealed in the course of this intricately
plotted novel.

Woven through Erik’s first person narrative are excerpts from
a journal kept by Lars Davidsen that recount fragments of family
history on a farm in Depression-era Minnesota and continues through
Lars’s service in the bloody battles of the South Pacific in
World War II. Intriguingly, as Hustvedt reveals in her
acknowledgements, the journal segments are drawn from a family
memoir written by her father, who died in 2003. Through the
journal, Erik gradually learns of the hardships that shaped his
family and gains new insights into the mind of this decent if
emotionally constricted man, groping for an understanding of the
“earlier generations who occupy the mental terrain within us
and the silences on that old ground, where shifting wraiths pass or
speak in voices so low we can’t hear what they are
saying.”

Alongside these family stories, events in Erik’s life take a
dark turn. Miranda Casaubon, a book designer and artist, and her
precocious five-year-old daughter Eglantine rent an apartment on
the ground floor of his Brooklyn house, and he is quickly, if
disturbingly, drawn into the circle of their lives. He discovers
photographs, some of them defaced, of the mother and daughter and
learns they’re being stalked by a performance artist named
Jeffrey Lane, Miranda’s former lover and Eglantine’s
father. Soon Lane adds photographs of Erik to his collection, and
the tension between them builds to an inevitable
confrontation.

Erik’s character also is revealed through the counseling
sessions he conducts with his patients, identified only as
“Mr. T.” or “Ms. W.” In these often
frustrating and sometimes painful encounters, Hustvedt exposes the
benefits and limitations of psychoanalysis, using them to explore
Erik’s internal struggles --- his growing attraction to
Miranda, his unease over Lane’s bizarre activities and his
desire to deepen his understanding of his father’s life. As
Erik’s own psychotherapist reminds him, “We’re
fragmented beings who cement ourselves together, but there are
always cracks. Living with the cracks is part of being, well,
reasonably healthy.”

Erik’s sister, Inga, wrestles with her own demons. Her
husband, Max Blaustein, a prominent novelist and screenwriter, has
been dead for several years, and now other writers, from an
aggressive magazine reporter to Max’s biographer, seek to
penetrate the mysteries of his life. When Inga discovers that the
star of one of Max’s movies possesses some of his letters,
she is forced to reassess her understanding of Max’s
life.

As much as it is a family chronicle, this novel is a story of
memory, reminding us that “our memories are forever being
altered by the present --- memory isn’t stable, but
mutable.” It’s a tale of secrets, exploring the lengths
we will go to preserve them and the toll that effort exacts. And
through Hustvedt’s skillful portrayal of Erik’s
counseling sessions and the active dream lives of her characters,
it’s a vivid exposition of the power of dreams.

THE SORROWS OF AN AMERICAN is a pensive, subtle novel. Still,
strong undercurrents of tension --- psychological, emotional and
erotic --- surge through its pages. Siri Hustvedt demonstrates an
acute and honest willingness to engage with powerful, sometimes
disturbing emotions. It’s that engagement that makes this
book such an admirable work.