Siri Hustvedt, The Enchantment of Lily Dahl
The Enchantment of Lily Dahl is the story of the coming-of-age of Lily Dahl, a nineteen-year-old woman from a small Minnesota town, waitress at the local diner, aspiring actress, and fan of Marilyn Monroe: she is the embodiment of the true American, small-town girl.
Lily shares her life between her shifts at the cafe and rehearsals of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which she has been given the part of Hermia, whose character she is trying to give life to, with the help of her next-door neighbor Mabel, an insomniac who is writing the story of her life. Lily also has a new love interest: her neighbor from the building across the street, the painter Edward Shapiro, whom Lily spies from her window at night.
Progressively, Lily’s life slides from the ordinary into the eerie, all beginning with the discovery of a pair of shoes supposedly belonging to Helen Bodler, a woman who disappeared several years ago. After a series of strange sightings made by several of the town people, Lily discovers another side of a small town in which, supposedly, nothing happens, and a new depth to some people she thought she knew through local gossips.
The story unfolds between dreams and everyday life, reality and illusion and develops several themes such as voyeurism, obsession, loneliness or the difficulty to know one’s true identity. Part mystery, part love story, part fairytale, The Enchantment of Lily Dahl is hard to put into a category.
Even though I enjoyed the easy-flowing narration and the character development, I think I missed the point of the story, in the sense that if I got most of the small stories within the story and their symbolism, I reached the end of the book without seeing the big picture, without feeling a cohesion to the story…
Rating: 3,5/5
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