The Observer: “Women as a Watched Species”

A short excerpt from the review by Elif Shafak of A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women: Essays on Art, Sex, and the Mind for the British newspaper The Observer: "Behind this ambitious collection of essays on art, creativity, sexuality and the mind is CP Snow's old question: why is there such a wide chasm between the world of literacy intellectuals and that of empirical scientists? Snow, married to a novelist and with friends working across all disciplines, was critical of the limits of rigid specialization - a problem Hustvedt recognizes from her own life: "In the last decade or so, I have repeatedly found myself at the bottom of Snow's gulf, shouting up to the persons gathered on either side of it."

"Hustvedt's new book is an impressive collection of essays by a novelist who clearly loves the humanities, the sciences and the ancient art of storytelling. But Hustvedt is not only a writer. She is also a passionate reader and therein lies the secret of this book - in the fundamental and incessant act of reading, rethinking, reconnecting."