a book
Light Years
James Salter · 1995 · 308 pages
A brilliant portrait of a marriage from the PEN/Faulkner Award-winner and author of A Sport and a Pastime, with an introduction by Richard Ford.
“Light Years is a novel of almost holy radiance to me. It is great in every sense of the word: vast, and timeless, and enduring.”—Lauren Groff, bestselling author of Fates and Furies
“Remarkable. An unexpectedly moving ode to beautiful lives frayed by time.”—James Wolcott, Esquire
“[A] twentieth-century masterpiece. At once iridescent, lyrical, mystical and magnetic.”—Bloomsbury Review
Nedra and Viri's favored life revolves around delightful dinners, imaginative games with their children, enviable friends, and idyllic days spent skating on a frozen river or basking in the sun on the beach. But even as Salter lingers over the surface of their marriage, he lets us see the fine cracks that are spreading through it, flaws that will eventually mar the lovely picture beyond repair.
Seductive, witty, and elegantly nuanced, Light Years is a classic novel of an entire generation that discovered the limits of its own happiness—and then felt compelled to destroy it.
“Light Years is a novel of almost holy radiance to me. It is great in every sense of the word: vast, and timeless, and enduring.”—Lauren Groff, bestselling author of Fates and Furies
“Remarkable. An unexpectedly moving ode to beautiful lives frayed by time.”—James Wolcott, Esquire
“[A] twentieth-century masterpiece. At once iridescent, lyrical, mystical and magnetic.”—Bloomsbury Review
Nedra and Viri's favored life revolves around delightful dinners, imaginative games with their children, enviable friends, and idyllic days spent skating on a frozen river or basking in the sun on the beach. But even as Salter lingers over the surface of their marriage, he lets us see the fine cracks that are spreading through it, flaws that will eventually mar the lovely picture beyond repair.
Seductive, witty, and elegantly nuanced, Light Years is a classic novel of an entire generation that discovered the limits of its own happiness—and then felt compelled to destroy it.
recommended by 3 people
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Tilda Swinton
“An urbane American marriage seen from above — a kind of exquisite horror story of the deathly chic of people having all their bases covered and somehow missing the point all the same. Very, very beautiful. Very, very sad.”↗
Claire Danes
“A friend gave this book to me, and I was just so struck by how beautifully the sentences were designed. The narrative is meditative and poetic. It seems a very accurate telling of what it is to be married—that is, for a fairly privileged white person to be married. At moments I would just stop, amazed by how elegant Salter’s prose is and how carefully he portrayed the inner lives of these people. The characters are estranged from each other, and I think maybe Salter is saying that it’s impossible to ever know somebody—that we can’t fully connect: As much as we struggle to and want to, it’s not entirely possible.”↗
