Negra and Viri are a married couple whose favoured life is centred around dinners, ingenious games with their children, enviable friends and near-perfect days passed skating on a frozen river or sunning on the beach. But fine cracks are beginning to spread through the shimmering surface of their life - flaws that will eventually mar the lovely picture beyond repair. Seductive, witty, tender and resonant, Light Years is an exquisite novel of lost lives and the elusiveness of happiness.
Light Years (Vintage International)
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'A sensitive author who is romantic, intelligent and superbly balanced' Joseph Heller
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
About the Author
James Salter is the author of the novels Solo Faces, Light Years, A Sport and a Pastime, The Arm of Flesh (revised as Cassada), and The Hunters; the memoirs Gods of Tin and Burning the Days; and the collection, Dusk and Other Stories which won the 1989 PEN/Faulkner Award. He lives in Colorado and on Long Island.
Richard Ford (b. 1944) is a well-known Mississippi writer, winner of both the 1996 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Pulitzer Prize in Literature for his novel Independence Day. His earlier works include A Piece of My Heart, The Ultimate Good Luck, Fifty Great Years of Esquire Fiction, Wildlife, and The Sportswriter.
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First Sentence
WE DASH THE BLACK RIVER, ITS flats smooth as stone. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
WE DASH THE BLACK RIVER, ITS flats smooth as stone. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
This novel, set in the period between the mid 1950s and mid 1970s in New York, is the story of the marriage of well-off Viri and Nedra. The chapters are episodic, each one painting a picture of the marriage. Much of the plot (what there is of plot that is)seems to takes place at small intimate dinner parties. The prose is quite beautiful - thick and textured, lyrical and evocative. But it only keeps us distanced from these already remote characters. I felt like I was observing Viri and Nedra under water, or through a thick layer of fog. Why are Viri and Nedra having their respective affairs? Why is the marriage crumbling, while they remain polite and affable with each other? The author never answers these questions other than to suggest it is collapsing under the weight of their own ennui and vacuity.The tumultuous political and historical events of the Sixties never seem to touch the characters in the book. I must admit that the first half of the book left me cold. Viri and Nedra seem self-indulgent people, not worthy of the readers attention. What kept me with the story was the exquisite prose style that Salter has crafted. But more and more I was drawn into and touched by their very sad story even as I still felt distanced from them. Just to immerse oneself in Salter's beautiful writing style made this a worthwhile reading experience.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Poetry in prose and technically brilliant. Never heard of James Salter before picking up this book. Perhaps because the American tradition is to prefer transparent plain text and books which are all plot and character (rather than beautiful writing - surely at least as important!), Salter just doesn't get that much press.
In any case, the writing is astonishing. Shocking to start with - the briefest of sentences like dabs of paint, rhythmic: "We dash the black river, its flats smooth as stone. Not a ship, not a dinghy, not one cry of white. The water lies broken, cracked from the wind."
And amazingly, the beauty of the prose doesn't get in the way of the meaning, the plot and the characters. In describing the main female character, Nedra, Salter (rarely and interestingly) begins speaking as the author in first person: "Before her were scissors, paper-thin boxes of cheese, French knives. On her shoulders there was perfume. I am going to describe her life from the inside outward, from its core, the house as well, rooms in the morning sunlight...Salter continues with one of the longest sentences of the book in this direct address.
Highly recommended.
In any case, the writing is astonishing. Shocking to start with - the briefest of sentences like dabs of paint, rhythmic: "We dash the black river, its flats smooth as stone. Not a ship, not a dinghy, not one cry of white. The water lies broken, cracked from the wind."
And amazingly, the beauty of the prose doesn't get in the way of the meaning, the plot and the characters. In describing the main female character, Nedra, Salter (rarely and interestingly) begins speaking as the author in first person: "Before her were scissors, paper-thin boxes of cheese, French knives. On her shoulders there was perfume. I am going to describe her life from the inside outward, from its core, the house as well, rooms in the morning sunlight...Salter continues with one of the longest sentences of the book in this direct address.
Highly recommended.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
"...photographs, noons. I adore you." Viri makes up these lines to his lover, Kaya. How do I express this-- what I hold in me of this book? I've read it twice, the first time, I was fifteen and sitting in the back of my parents' car and read it whole in four hours in the heat and dry luster of Northern California summertime. I memorized that line, the above one, and when I fell slowly and inexorably into passionate crazy love with *this other author* I spent long days at the beach, scrawling Salter's lines in the sand with a thin piece of driftwood. Salter captures the dense erotic luster of relationships like no one else. I fell in love with this book. It taught me so many things. Ah, I've forgotten about the second time I read it. Yes, that was something. I read it because I knew I had missed the message the first time around. Thoroughly passion-crazed in my own life, I needed to feel the supple prose slip me into dream-world again. What a lovely book. Ai, and read Salter's *Dusk*, as well.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
King Salter
Crystaline prose; cool, elegant, disecting. Grown up and magnificent. Salter is an ultimate modern stylist. If only we could be as mature as he writes.
Published 10 months ago by Colin Ferris
2.0 out of 5 stars
Too pretentious by half
Much too pretentious for me, its language straying from poetry into nonsenical-ness. Characters interesting, but even the descriptions of them often contained blatant... Read more
Published 18 months ago by Barry Tennison
5.0 out of 5 stars
Light years better than most fiction writing
Forgive the pun in my title; this is a great novel, from a writer who is still largely unknown. I imagine James Salter will be rediscovered one day, and people will wonder how his... Read more
Published on 30 April 2011 by Peter Kettle
4.0 out of 5 stars
like observing thru a window!
it was as though I was observing the characters and their lives through a window from the street... an interesting reading experience. Read more
Published on 24 April 2011 by Clipper 314
4.0 out of 5 stars
A great stylist
Beautifully written. It is very moving at times but the writing is superb throughout. It has a fairly unusual structure in that it really describes a series of incidents or scenes... Read more
Published on 2 Dec 2010 by The Emperor
5.0 out of 5 stars
Poetry in prose
Not a traditionally told story, the plot is almost entirely incidental. What we are left with is the language, lyrical and beautiful, that can veer from a description of a family... Read more
Published on 20 Aug 1999
4.0 out of 5 stars
Profoundly moving
I read this book while vacationing in Italy and attempting to cope with my divorce, a sudden and unexpected loss in my life. This book will knock you out. You'll never forget it.
Published on 10 July 1999
4.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful novel
A wonderfully-written, poignant portrait of a marriage. The end filled me with sadness and the chapters were consistently memorable. Read more
Published on 28 Jun 1999
4.0 out of 5 stars
A lightly woven filigree of regret.
Much less of a story than a lingering retrospective gaze at the subtle astonishments that have come to populate a life, giving it the plenitude towards which it has helplessly... Read more
Published on 4 April 1999
5.0 out of 5 stars
A heartbreaking portrayl of a marriage
James Salter takes you so deeply inside the marriage of Nedra and Viri that you know these people as well as your own family before the book is done. Read more
Published on 24 Nov 1996
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