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THE SORROWS OF AN AMERICAN
By: Siri Hustvedt
Henry Holt and Co.
April 2008
On Sale: April 1, 2008
Featuring: Erik Davidsen; Inga
320 pages
ISBN: 0805079084
EAN: 9780805079081
Hardcover
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Fiction
The Sorrows of an American is a soaring feat of storytelling about the immigrant experience and the ghosts that haunt families from one generation to another When Erik Davidsen and his sister, Inga, find a disturbing note from an unknown woman among their dead fatherβs papers, they believe he may be implicated in a mysterious death. The Sorrows of an American tells the story of the Davidsen family as brother and sister uncover its secrets and unbandage its wounds in the year following their fatherβs funeral. Returning to New York from Minnesota, the grieving siblings continue to pursue the mystery behind the note. While Erikβs fascination with his new tenants and emotional vulnerability to his psychiatric patients threaten to overwhelm him, Inga is confronted by a hostile journalist who seems to know a secret connected to her dead husband, a famous novelist. As each new mystery unfolds, Erik begins to inhabit his emotionally hidden fatherβs history and to glimpse how his impoverished childhood, the Depression, and the war shaped his relationship with his children, while Inga must confront the reality of her husbandβs double life. A novel about fathers and children, listening and deafness, recognition and blindness; the pain of speaking and the pain of keeping silent, the ambiguities of memory, loneliness, illness, and recovery. Siri Hustvedtβs exquisitely moving prose reveals one familyβs hidden sorrows through an extraordinary mosaic of secrets and stories that reflect the fragmented nature of identity itself.
 Media BuzzAll Things Considered - August 31, 2008
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