RaveThe Irish TimesIt’s a plot that in the hands of a traditional and less interesting novelist could have been walked down predictable pathways ... Indeed, it’s quite a feat that María, few vestiges of whose own reality are disclosed, should be able to hold our attention as she does ... Discursive, digressive, repetitive, she speaks in a style reminiscent of the French nouveau roman. Statements are restated, reiterated, qualified and modified ... Preferring the comma to the stop, Marías’s extended, many-claused sentences equally have a Jamesian quality ... What makes him exciting is not just his way of seeing but his way of writing. María’s ruminations – hypnotic, banal and profound by turns – open up, in the spirit of Joyce, a sense of new possibilities
Siri Hustvedt
PositiveThe Irish Times\"Is Memories of the Future a novel or a memoir? It comes billed as a novel but is convincingly presented as a memoir, and indeed the situation and many events mirror the author’s own experience. Part of Siri Hustvedt’s achievement is to persuade us that whether or which doesn’t matter ... Just as memory plays games with us, Hustvedt plays an exuberant game between it and fiction, while telling us it’s what she’s doing ... Memories of the Future may be baggy and rambling but it’s under the control of a consummate intelligence. Hustvedt wears her erudition lightly and her cool intellect has a playful and warming passion. To experience her witty, speculative and incisive mind makes her book an unusual and great pleasure to read.\
