The Enchantment Of Lily Dahl (2004) - Plot & Excerpts
SEXY and EERIE.For a grown up man like me, what a way to celebrate Halloween. This book has that eerie feeling that one gets by reading Emilie Bronte's Wuthering Heights and at the same time watching an R-18 movie with frontal nudity. Lily Dahl, this novel's main protagonist, is a 19-y/o county girl who is a waitress in a highway side cafe in a small sleepy town in America, Webster, Minnesota. She is dreaming for a better life as an actress by going to New York. So, aside from working as a waitress, she plays bit roles in the town's local production. Example of this roles is that of Hermia in William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.In that town are all those mysterious characters. Lily Dahl is like Alice but not in the wonderland but in a creepy and secretive town. Hustvedt made a wonderful job of intricately interweaving the lives of her characters using, as backdrop, a laidback town whose history was laden with many secrets spanning at least two past generations. Then after establishing the interwoven lives, she slowly revealed those secrets while maintaining the foreboding danger to Lily's life with only the sextuagerian lady, Mabel as her supposedly protector. The friendship between Lily and Mabel in this book is very unlikely because of their age difference: 16 and 76 but the way their characters are portrayed made it all plausible. An example of this is when they sleep in one bed. Their bodies touch like two small girls and they wake up in the morning not minding what position - bodies and limbs touching or interlocking - they find themselves in. I'm not saying that I want to be in bed with a friend who is a young man and that our bodies can touch without malice to prove that our friendship is true and platonic. All I'm saying is that this is how imaginative Hustvedt is by choosing an odd friendship for her novel. Odd in a way that it is very likely to happen in real life but the way it was portrayed in the book made it seemed like it is a regular fare that is not too unlikely to happen. This is my second book written by Paul Auster's (one of my favorite authors) wife, Siri Hustvedt. Early this year, I read What I Loved and it was one of the suprisingly good novels I've read this year. It's nice to be surprised by reading and liking a book that you did think to be good. So, when I picked up this book, her second novel, The Enchantment of Lily Dahl, my expectation was high and I was glad that she did not disappoint me. This is totally different from What I Loved so I think Hustvedt is one of those authors who do not rewrite themselves. I am still her fan.Given those characters and setting and Hustvedt being a female writer, one would easily guess that her stories would dwell heavily on emotions and feelings. However, Hustvedt puts more brain rather than heart in her works. Not sure if husband Paul Auster has something to do with her style of writing but considering the mystery-thriller ingredient in Hustvedt's works, I will not be surprised if my guess is correct. As you know, Auster's works are strong on mystery-thriller flavor.Keep on writing, Siri Hustvedt. You have one avid fan here in the Philippines. Well, I am one of the moderators of Filipinos group here at Goodreads with 1,700 members and I am still to hear any of them raving about you yet so I think I need to spread a word to read your works.
Twelve pages into this book and you realize two things: first, Siri Hustvedt has so many hooks that if this were an album you’d be singing along by the third time you heard it. Second, there’s a spiritual connection between this book and Sherwood Anderson’s odd masterpiece, Winesburg, Ohio, in both its small-townness and the entwined themes of identity and sexuality.A little further into the book and you may also be thinking of Edward Hopper’s paintings of American loneliness. There are times when the book veritably aches with loneliness and yet it doesn’t dwell there, merely uses them as launching off points for big questions.Here’s an example: "Do you ever feel nothing's real?" Lily looked at him. "Well," she said slowly," sometimes I think ordinary things are kind of strange..." Martin nodded vigorously. "It's, it's like there's a skin over everything, and if you could just get under it, you'd, you'd get to what's real, but you never can, so you've got to look for a way to cut through it. You see?"It’s a lovely exchange, though serious readers will note it has one adverb too many. There aren’t so many of the big questions that the book becomes pondersome. Indeed, at times Lily is so brave her character verges on becoming incredible, which may be a more serious flaw than an extra adverb.Still, she pulls us into a romance with a mysterious artist, meetups with the mentally-challenged Martin, and explorations of the theater and persona with her best friend, Mabel. The book pulses and crackles. It is vivid and engaging. There are some lovely images here: burnt shoes, a realistic doll, paintings. There are also some horrifying images, but you start to realize that will happen about two-thirds of the way in.What strikes me most about Siri Hustvedt’s writing is her ability to generate sparks from sentences about ordinary things. This is about a small town in Minnesota and as we read we find it is us that are enchanted, alongside Lily. A lot of this magic is in the words. Here’s a snippet: The room was warm, and the heat seemed to make Mabel’s perfume stronger. Its sweet smell mingled with the dust, and the sun shone through open curtains onto the coffee table.Or The room smelled of paint, smoke and other nameless but familiar things, and when she sat down in the canvas chair, Lily felt afraid of those smells. A delightful read that makes you want to read more from this wonderful writer.
What do You think about The Enchantment Of Lily Dahl (2004)?
I thought it was just me. I thought that the way I was reading this book was making my understanding of the story disjointed and unsatisfactory. The story has many holes, gaps and unexplained motives. The author takes the book in one direction and then another. At first we have a coming of age book about a small town girl treading water waiting to start college and save a little money waitressing. Then it takes on an erotic thriller edge. Then a surrealist/magical realism edge. The jumps the story makes often made me search back into the previously read pages to see if I missed something. I think that there was confusion in the authors mind as to what she wanted the novel to be, or the novel was cobbled together using good bits of writing, or was it some overly ambitious genre bender attempt?The only reason I gave it 3 stars is because even as only the second book Siri Husvedt wrote there is writing of considerable power. There was one passage near the end that suddenly made me tear up. If you are intrigued by some of the literary hype surrounding Siri Hustvedt start with 'What I Loved'. A big novel brimming with heart and ideas but much more disciplined.
—Rob
Siri Hustvedt is probably one of my favorite contemporary authors and her two most recent novels, What I Loved and The Sorrows of an American, are both minor masterpieces in my eyes.Unfortunately, The Enchantment of Lily Dahl lacks the finesse apparent in Hustvedt's later works and the character of Lily Dahl isn't quite intriguing enough to make up for the meandering direction of the plot. In fact, she comes across as somewhat of a cipher, her personality shifting to suit the people around her and the situations in which she finds herself involved. In addition, the supporting characters are more caricature-like than I've come to expect from Hustvedt, drawn in broad, generalized strokes and quite unlike the subtly but richly-drawn characters in her later novels. The prose, too, lacks her later sophistication and the plot is thin at best. Hustvedt attempts to build a mystery, looming sinisterly over the seemingly innocent small-town setting, but the build-up is too slow, the final reveal too underwhelming to make the journey toward the resolution worthwhile. At under 300 pages, the sluggish pace of the book made it feel much longer than books I've read of twice the length.The Enchantment of Lily Dahl reveals glimmers of the promise upon which Hustvedt would later deliver in spades: many of the characters are types she has continued to draw from, to much greater success, and there are a handful of truly dazzling moments in the prose. While it's interesting to compare the novel to those that would come after and mark Hustvedt's development over time, I would not recommend this book to readers who have just begun diving into her body of work. There's a whole lot more to admire in her more recent accomplishments.
—Shannon
It's interesting to me that other reviews have discussed the notion of 'mystery' in this novel, as if this is the central core. I agree that there are mysterious things happening, but they seem to me to simply be the sum total of life in a small town where idiosyncrasy can often reign. This novel is well written and thoughtful, it creates a series of slightly, but well drawn characters who bring and overall sense of truth to the story. Hustvedt's skill always seems to me to be foremost in her understanding of human interactions and how these can be almost limitlessly unique. I still prefer What I Loved, but this is really good too, at it's best, erotic, strange and poignant.
—Bridgette
