Light Years

Book arrived in perfect condition.

Brilliant, coruscating prose

Long but utterly unputdownable family saga, set over the two years preceding World War 2.Every summer, the well to do Cazelet family converge at their parents' Sussex home. Three sons, each with a very different family: eldest, Hugh, is still suffering the after-effects of WW1- his past rubs off on daughter Polly, panicking about another war.Second son Edward is charming and a womanizer...unknown to his wife, who is bored with her life.And youngest son, artist Rupert, who must decide whether to enter the family timber business, and cope with a demanding (and much younger) second wife.Each has several children, again all vividly depicted as very different personalities. And then there's dutiful spinster sister Rachel, involved in a secret relationship with a woman; and the elderly parents, part of a different generation, and the numerous servants...'Family sagas' can often be rather trashy and forgettable. This is stunningly written - I'm going to read the whole set.

I am about a quarter of the way through and this is hard work. It is like reading a list from a "write the best metaphor" competition. Every sentence is over the top, like he is trying to prove himself. I can hardly follow the story, or tell who the characters are. Maybe that doesn't matter, maybe the style is more important. Let's see if it improves, and if I can make it to the end.Well, I finished it, although I could have given up several times. There wasn't much of a story, and it was hard to know which character was doing what. It still felt like a random collection of metaphors, similes, analogies. I think I could have skipped a few pages and not even noticed. This is the book equivalent of jazz band playing a twenty-minute double-bass solo. Very skilful, but not much fun for the audience.

Having read the delightful “A Sport and a Pastime” I was looking forward to Light Years with some anticipation. What I found was both unexpected and rather disappointing. It’s the story, partly, of a marriage between Viri (full name Vladimir), and Nedra, moneyed people in New York who holiday each year in Amagansett in a house they own. Or sometimes they go to Europe – Italy, perhaps, or Paris. They are casually unfaithful. Nedra, long-term with a friend, Jivan, and Viri with a number of women, as they appear in the social milieu. His manner of writing here is sometimes very odd – a kind of wandering prose which seems designed to impress but is often tortuously off the mark. For example, what on earth does this sentence mean: “the teeth in his bearded mouth were perfect, they were like the soft hands that betray fleeing aristocrats”? It’s ludicrous. One loses heart, but there we are. The heart falters and falls out of a Paris window. He can write like a dream on one page, only to falter on the next.Perhaps he has to write himself into a particular mood to begin making sense, because some of this book is delightful. Here, for instance: “The room was always cool and dark. It smelled brackish like the hold of a ship. He had built a table; he had painted the wall near the bed. She was a young girl stunned by love. They were the same age, they were nearly the same. You cannot imagine the depth of those summer days, the silence. She came to his room almost daily. He employed her with the greatest pleasure on earth.” This tells us all we need to know. We don’t even need their names and at times it reads like music, very softly playing in the background, leading us deeper into the realms of sensual love like a supreme master of the art.But Viri and Nedra are more uncertain creations. They are complaisant, too sophisticated to sustain real love for more than an episode or two. The coldness of the two lead characters, the brittleness of their liaisons interferes with the atmosphere of the novel, making one wonder if anything they do, with whoever they do it, has much meaning, and whether their involvements bring them any peace of mind or self-understanding? Pleasure seems to be the point, the only point. Salter purposively arranges it to be the point, though it all seems to happen by accident. Was this his also his aim? Or is it worse and the love affairs are only a hunger for novelty. I would like to be drawn in somehow, without being made to feel this disturbing fraudulence at the centre of this novel.

Salter writes with short, beautifully constructed sentences and makes abundant use of interesting and evocative similes, which are perfectly placed within the prose. While Light Years does not have much of a plot, the pages are packed with colourful personal experiences of the characters and a continuous flow of events, making this a thoroughly enjoyable and rewarding read.

My favourite book of all time

A splendid description of boredom within marriage. I enjoyed it and found the writing style excellent.

Beautifully written book.

My wife said it was a good read

James Salter ha sido todo un descubrimiento. Su estilo narrativo es absolutamente impecable, consigue introducirnos en la historia a través de las palabras como en un río fresco y luminoso... Magnífico.

Après avoir lu 'All that is", le dernier livre de James Salter, j'ai voulu découvrir une oeuvre plus ancienne (1975).Cette lecture m'a permis de mieux apprécier le romancier et de mieux comprendre ce qu'il avait d'unique dans sa façon de faire vivre ses personnages.Lecture recommandée pour découvrir un auteur américain moins connu.

Et voilà la question???. Mais un jugement peut-il être honnête quand l'oeuvre à découvrir a été précédée d'une telle rafale de louanges de la part des critiques que l'on s'attend au chef-d'oeuvre absolu et dans ce cas, j'ai été déçue, car j'ai eu du mal à entrer dans cette histoire d'une Amerique en malaise, thème qui deviendra récurrent dans les décades suivantes et que Salter a montré du doigt parmi les premiers. C'est l'oeuvre d'un écrivain en devenir qui n'a pas encore trouvé son rythme et son style, mais qui est exrèmement touchant.

I really wanted to like this book in the hope that I had found another author whose books I could go thru' like the proverbial hot knife thru butter. Would I discover another Edward St. Aubyn or Stephen Bennatar?Sadly I found the over description, the flowery prose, tho' in some cases beautiful, really got in the way of the character development. I neither knew nor cared about whom I was reading. Frankly I found the style somewhat pretentious and after a while irritating. The time shifts confused me. Was I reading about something in the present or an incident past?If you like your characters to have off the wall names like "Viri" "Nedra"..."Franca""Jivan" and "Hadji"...this last one , the dog....Then you might like this book...to me its an indication that I am reading something profoundly phony and labouring for effect. I couldn't finish it unfortunately.

In good condition, good typescript. It arrived promptly. Not that Ilimethe edition per se, it is not pretty, but that is not Amazon's fault

Años luz. Genial disección de las relaciones y sentimientos humanos y el bisturí no tiene compasión. Imprescindible para los amantes de la buena literatura.

Pure Salter. It had been a long time since I finished two novels by the same author in a row. I read "All That Is" and this other masterpiece, "Light Years" and wished I had a third to read.

Like reading a dream. Delicious.