Immediately from the title you know that your heroine will be an exceptional and controversial character. “The Blazing World” was the title of a work by Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle. While Margaret Cavendish published under her own name a rarity in the 17th century for a woman- Siri Hustvedt’s heroine Harriet Burden decides to utilize 3 male artists as her “masks” to expose the art world’s dismissiveness towards female artists through an equation of her work-their name.

The novel reads like an exhibition catalog with varying viewpoints, interviews, personal remembrances and fabricated criticisms. You follow Harriet through her marriage to Felix Lord the philandering Uber Art Dealer, lukewarm reception to her exhibitions, motherhood, marginalization, widowhood and her decision to morph her art into a quasi-collaborative process taking on a certain amount of persona from her male mask. Harriet is quoted in the book as utilizing the “masculine enhancement effect”.

Philosophical references play a crucial part in the narrative. Rune’s work The Banality of Glamour is a direct reference to Hannah Arendt’s attributed statement of the Banality of Evil when discussing Eichmann. Rune is Hannah’s “Third Man” and by far the most successful and destructive of her collaborations.

The book is much more complex than a simple straight art narrative exposé in the style of the Guerilla Girls. Harriet has a lot of rage towards the men in her life-a distant father, secretive husband and duplicitous collaborator. I liked Harriet. Yes she is deeply flawed, but she is also loving and creative and interesting and I look forward to exploring more of Hustvedt’s work.