Includes study guide and interview with the author.

Blazing World was basically universally liked at NUBClub. The novel follows the story of a painter who decides to see what happens when she releases her work under the names of three living male artists instead, in an attempt to subvert the misogyny of the art world. Hustvedt tells the story through a variety of voices: reports for the men who serve as her mask, media around the openings and critiques, and from the diary of the artist herself. Hustvedt does a terrific job writing those voices -- the two male artists who speak and the academic reaching the experiment provide an interesting set of foils in Harry's experiment, and each brings a different perspective to their role and her mission. The prose here is electric and dazzling; the novel keeps finding interesting ways to twist the concept and powerful ways to say it. The fact that the final artist Rune so thoroughly undermines Harry's point makes the novel a profound tragedy, and we spent hours discussing the way Hustvedt defines gender, bias, and media narratives. Our only issue with the novel was that we pretty much all agreed that Harry's direct language in her journal was certainly the weakest part of the novel. Unlike all of the other characters, her language came off as stilted and inauthentic. But that was a minor flaw in an otherwise amazing work. Hustvedt has created a beautiful and painful treatise on how woman and men are perceived in the art world, and it's not a work that should be ignored.