A 62-year-old writer - initials S.H. - discovers the journal she wrote during her first year in New York in 1978/9 and looks back on her 23-year-old self with amusement and anger. Reproducing extracts from it, which include parts of the novel she'd set herself 12 months to write about a teenage boy obsessed with Sherlock Holmes, she relives an exhilarating, eventful and often frightening year. The provocative and brilliant new novel by bestselling author Siri Hustvedt.