What do readers think of The Summer Without Men by Siri Hustvedt? Write your own review.

really not what i envisioned , i really forced myself to read through this book i felt it to be boring.

Mia's 30 year old marriage is on Pause, so she spends a summer with her mother and her aging and ailing friends, and teaches poetry to seventh grade girls. The book is a pleasant intellectual meditation about women, love, marriage, aging, adolescent girls. The best parts of the book are when she writes about the dynamics of the 7 young girls, however when Hustvedt writes about the differences of the sexes, it reads more like an essay or a semi-scientific article, than a novel. Overall The Summer Without Men is a less satisfying novel, than her What I Loved.

Hustvedt's fifth novel details a poet’s mid-life reassessment of her marriage during one transformative summer. While the ending wraps up matters a bit too neatly, the narrator's strong voice proves both comforting and thought-provoking throughout. Smart summer reading for those seeking alternatives to typical “beach reads”.

The Summer Without Men is a dense, witty, feminist exploration of gender through literature, philosphy and neuroscience, and secondarily through the eyes of the 50-something narrator Mia as she retreats to her hometown after a nervous breakdown prompted by her husband's midlife-crisis affair with a (naturally!) younger woman. This is a very intellectual book--the reader, if interested, may find herself pausing frequently to "Google" obscure Latin phrases, unfamiliar contemporary poets, and, frankly, for me, hitherto unheard-of sociobiologists and antique if not ancient Men (ironic emphasis on "men") of Learning. Don't be intimidated, though! While occasionally the book seems less like a novel and more like a feminist lecture or outright rant, it's wry and humorous and there's just enough (somewhat banal) "outside" touching the "inside" to keep the pages turning. I was strongly reminded of Marilyn French's excellent 70s-era novel The Women's Room and think that any readers' group with a focus on women's issues would greatly enjoy The Summer Without Men.