Masks, but what's behind them? 
 Harriet Burden, the protagonist of this novel, frustrated by the inability of a female artist to gain the exposure or respect accorded to men, collaborates in turn with three male artists willing to exhibit her work as theirs. Although there are common themes in all three exhibits, their styles are radically different, changing with each mask that Burden puts on. I found this interesting, since the three books by Siri Hustvedt that I have read (What I Loved, The Summer Without Men, and this), while also sharing similar themes, are so different in texture and approach as to present quite different facets of their author. What I Loved inhabits the art world as brilliantly as this new book does, but it is full of characters that you care about as human beings, and is built around a linear story that keeps you reading. The Summer Without Men, the weakest of these three books, is basically a justified feminist lament centered around a character who is difficult to like, and told more or less in scrapbook form, though with flashes of real brilliance. 
 And this one? First of all, it is as tightly engineered intellectually as a BMW. Although it continues some of the scrapbook approach of Summer, being a collection of statements, cuttings, and journal entries illuminating the last decade of Burden's career, it has none of the random feel of its predecessor. The "Editor's Introduction" immediately introduces an atmosphere of scholarly rigor, footnoted with references to writers, artists, and thinkers who, whether famous or obscure, all seem to be real. Harriet Burden's range of knowledge (and therefore by rather too obvious implication that of her creator) is phenomenal. A very small selection of the names referenced in her book might include: Margaret Cavendish, Edmund Husserl, Soren Kierkegaard, Tertullian, and Aby Warburg. These are just some of the names I happen to recognize, but the list of those I don't is inexhaustible: Gallese, Gassendi, Manturana, Metzinger, Varela, Zahavi.... Every reference that I followed up turns out to be the genuine article, so I assume they all are, but I do get the feeling that part of Hustvedt's reason for writing is to display everything she knows, and wow it's a lot! I was blown away... but not drawn in. 
 About art, Hustvedt writes well, as she always has. It is interesting that when artists are mentioned in modern fiction, they are almost always conceptual artists or the makers of installations--probably because such art is much easier to convey in words. The last major novels I recall whose protagonists are actual painters are My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok and The Underpainter by Jane Urquhart. But in A Map of Glass, Urquhart turned to sculptors and environmental artists. Bill Wechsler, the leading artist in Hustvedt's What I Loved (also referenced here) begins as a painter, but turns to constructions. And both artists in Claire Messud's recent The Woman Upstairs--a novel with remarkable similarities to this one, and I think the more successful of the two--are engaged in making environments that develop feminist themes. 
 As does Harriet Burden: everything ranging from doll-houses through soft sculptures to room-filling labyrinths. Her first "mask" collaboration is a piece called "The History of Western Art," in which a huge sculpture based on a Titian nude is pasted all over with witty references to women over the past 600 years of art. Her second, "Suffocation Rooms," is a series of kitchens where the furniture gradually gets larger and the temperature hotter. Her third, "Beneath," a collaboration with a neo-Warhol media star known only as Rune, is an oblique response to 9/11, in which the viewer penetrates a maze of distorted passages pierced with windows and peepholes giving onto disturbing sights. If there is a conventional plot in the novel at all, it is the mystery of why the collaboration with Rune went so very wrong, and possibly contributed to the death of both artists. [All the above, incidentally, are facts that we learn from the introduction.] 
 When I started this review, I was sure I was going to give the book a five-star rating, if only for its intellectual density and the fascination of its multi-voiced approach. But as I read, I realized that while these things can intrigue or amuse me, they do not make me care about the people. I miss the plot of What I Loved, and Oh how I miss the characters! After reading 360 pages by and about Harriet Burden, I still don't feel I know her. I sympathize with her plight, yes--most of what Hustvedt says about women's issues is spot on--but that is very different from caring about her as a person. And while there is much of interest in the story of the failings of Harriet's parents and her late husband (a wealthy art dealer), or perhaps her own as a mother, there is simply too much there--together with musings on sexuality and a dozen other topics. I just feel that on the emotional and thematic planes Hustvedt is trying to repeat what she does in the intellectual sphere--cramming in a lot of everything, but leaving little for the reader to embrace. So those five stars for effort must alas be rounded down, way down.