What it’s like to lose someone who always wanted the best for you: In her collection of essays “Mothers, Fathers and Perpetrators”, Siri Hustvedt bids farewell to her parents.
It was with a very special perception that Ester Vegan Hustvedt began her speech on the occasion of her eldest daughter Siri’s fiftieth birthday. She talked about the first movements of the child, that “tickling in the stomach” that is like the proverbial flapping of butterfly wings, and she spoke of the “deep joy” she felt at the signs of her first pregnancy. The fiftieth birthday of the eldest of four daughters was also her eighty-second birthday. Mother and daughter were born on the same day, February 19th. The fact that we experience this also has to do with the tenor of this volume of essays.