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Light Years

4.18 of 5 stars 4.18 · rating details · 1,020 ratings · 158 reviews

This exquisite, resonant novel is a brilliant portrait of marriage by a contemporary American master. Even as he lingers over the lustrous surface of Viri and Nedra's marriage, James Salter makes us see the cracks that are spreading through it, flaws that will in time mar it beyond repair. "An unexpectedly moving ode to beautiful lives frayed by time."

Paperback, 308 pages

Published January 31st 1995 by Vintage (first published 1975)

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"Love" on The Guardian's "1000 Novels Everyone Must Read" List

111th out of 140 books — 57 voters

mundane, domestic, painful

5th out of 90 books — 14 voters

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Jun 02, 2011 Eric rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: ficciones, unexpected, shouldreread

A novel to read quickly, in a few long gulps. Reopening it each time, I needed at least 20 pages to recover the book’s subtle groove. Snatching a chapter here or a few pages there didn’t work: the characters sounded trivial, their pillow talk and dinner chatter banal, infuriating. I had to let their days accumulate. And the writing can seem all-too hushed and solemn; but the imagery becomes inevitable, the rhythms right. I admire Salter for having the balls to write a novel requiring such immers...more

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Mar 07, 2013 Lee rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: fans of "Revolutionary Road"?

Hmm. I admired this more than I liked it. It's one of the most generic stories ever told, really, about the dissolution of the privileged lives of family and friends. Westchester County. The Hamptons. European travel. Educated, urbane conversation. Too much knowledge of good wine. Hot, intelligent children. "Luminous" prose, yea, but it seemed too often mannered for me. The syntax is consistent, two phrases separated by a comma, the second phrase deepening the resonance, often with an unexpected...more

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Jul 11, 2007 Pam rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book is so beautifully written, so evocative -- not for everyone, I'm sure. The characters are held at a distance, and aren't always likeable. But there are these occasional, intimate glimpses.

I think I loved it for the language and setting. Moments like this: the father tells his little girls that he found their missing pony, Urusla, in the lake. He tells the girls that Urusla was swimming. The pony was looking for onions that grow along the bottom of the lake, she was stirring up the oni...more

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Dec 28, 2010 William Thomas rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: literature, pitch-perfect, prose-poetry

You ever have one of those days where you spend the waning daylight hours staring out of a picture window at nothing in particular, with a far away look on your face, trying to clear your mind with a scotch in one hand and the other hadn stuffed in your pocket, rocking back and forth on your heels every so often, shaking the glass to break up the ice and then sighing so heavily that you physically deflate, your shoulders slumping and posture slouching?

This book is the literary equivalent of thi...more

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May 20, 2008 Matt rated it 5 of 5 stars

Like Virginia Woolf, Salter has managed to totally entrance me with characters and a genre that I would have professed zero interest in. He's just a really freakin' good writer, and a good listener...I get the feeling he pays attention to life as he lives it.

The beautiful heart of this novel--read during a very difficult period in my own life--is its exploration of the role that choice might play in determining the quality of one's existence. Viri's dilemma. Is it, as the party guest says, that...more

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Dec 01, 2012 JDK1962 rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: abandoned

Gave up on this after 7-8 chapters. Very poetic language, actually overly poetic for my taste. But I was having problem after problem with it. The 3rd person omniscient narration that occasionally lapsed into first person for a bit of writerly intrusion. No sense of where scenes were happening in time (within the timeline of the novel). Having to re-read bits to disambiguate pronouns. No discernible plot emerging in the chapters I read. Being utterly indifferent to the characters.

I know this is...more

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Dec 23, 2011 Bradley rated it 1 of 5 stars

I tried to like it, I really tried. Had to read it for a class, and while there were enjoyable moments, it was for the most part incredibly boring. Someone else reviewing it called it old white guy fiction and that is exactly what it is. And there is entertaining and good old white guy fiction, but Light Years is not even that. I not only didn't like either of the main characters, I actively hated them. They were selfish, self-centered, altogether terrible people who didn't have any real problem...more I tried to like it, I really tried. Had to read it for a class, and while there were enjoyable moments, it was for the most part incredibly boring. Someone else reviewing it called it old white guy fiction and that is exactly what it is. And there is entertaining and good old white guy fiction, but Light Years is not even that. I not only didn't like either of the main characters, I actively hated them. They were selfish, self-centered, altogether terrible people who didn't have any real problems but still whined about the ones they did have, most of which (the problems) came about because of their own doing. I often felt confused about where the novel was going (in part because it moves so slowly because Salter must spend three pages describing a street and only half of one describing a character and their thought process) and had no idea why any of the characters were doing most of what they did. Every character is a pretentious rich asshole who desperately wants to be famous like the composers and authors and playwrights they either look up to or want to look smart by mentioning/talking about. And their depression comes about because they're unhappy about being an ordinary person in an ordinary marriage with an ordinary person who they perceive to be holding them back. Don't get me wrong, I understand the novel's themes and to a certain extent what it was about, but that doesn't change the fact that it is still incredibly boring, and it's easy enough to talk about those themes and still write an interesting novel. And it's not a requirement that there be likable characters, but I don't find myself wanting to read a book as often if there isn't one, and there isn't one here. If a character is a terrible person, I can at least care if they're at least interestingly terrible, but these characters were mostly just whiny.

Don't even get me started on the dialogue and Salter's writing. If I never read another phrase about some famous composer's famous bombshell mistress again, I'll die happy. And someone please tell James Salter to go easy on the similes. Near the end of the book, he would write three sentences in a paragraph that would simply be "She was like a fire hydrant that's run out of water. She was like a house that no one's lived in for years. She was a tiger that's run out of breath." Even if the similes hadn't been terrible in the first place, his overuse of them made me want to throw the book across the room. My professor said it's been called the "greatest book ever written about a marriage" and I just don't understand it. There was hardly anything about the marriage anyway, and frankly, I wouldn't have even suspected these characters were married to each other if Salter hadn't actually said so. There was no emotion between them at all, and there was hardly any emotion to speak of, period. I was bored out of my mind the whole time while I was reading the book, and I'm still waiting for the point in the novel where I'm supposed to care. I can care about rich white guys' problems if the novel is at least interesting, if it makes me want to read more. But the main characters here are all shallow, clueless, selfish people who blame everyone but themselves for their unhappiness.

I honestly didn't hate the book that much, so I don't know where all this is coming from. But I liked nearly every other book in the course a whole lot and this one stood out from the others, not just because I didn't like it, but because it was also so different. I was kind of shocked to see the high rating it has here, because the rest of my class seemed to share my feelings about the book. To each their own, I guess.(less)

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Sep 14, 2011 Kimberly Faith rated it 4 of 5 stars

Salter analyzes marriage and the merits of independence vs. dependence. But, the novel is really a study of time. We know these characters through pin-points over twenty years. The writing is often stunning particularly as the characters travel through Europe in search of themselves and their true happiness. Salter is often oblique but because of this spare hand, some choices really mesmerize. He pays great attention to the changing of seasons and these shifts mark big changes for the characters...more Salter analyzes marriage and the merits of independence vs. dependence. But, the novel is really a study of time. We know these characters through pin-points over twenty years. The writing is often stunning particularly as the characters travel through Europe in search of themselves and their true happiness. Salter is often oblique but because of this spare hand, some choices really mesmerize. He pays great attention to the changing of seasons and these shifts mark big changes for the characters. They are either skating on a frozen lake or swimming in it, red-faced from the sun. Amongst the despair of a tumbling marriage, there are the great joys of children, the family dog, and nature. The simple gifts of the earth don't go unnoticed. In the end, Salter is an ambassador for less is more. This book certainly achieves more because of what it holds back. There is something classic and mythical about his voice but also his subjects. The many lavish dinners and conversations that stretch over many pages are all in service of philosophy. He is also aware of the senses. During a tense conversation over the telephone he has our protagonist noticing that maids are dropping brooms in the hall. A lesser writer wouldn't have considered that in real life it's agonizing and yet real to have some awful sound obstructing the news you need to hear.

Nedra and Viri, our leads, betray one another. The center of the family breaks. As they fall apart and look for lovers, they realize the temporary exchange of their new lives. Lovers fade in and out or are incomparable to the first. They are becoming aware that happiness isn't coming to them. They are desperately looking for it. And then death comes. Nedra spends the bulk of the novel considering herself tough as a man but then, as she gets her freedom, she becomes intimate with other fears: poverty, loneliness, and rejection. Still, she surfaces the most. She realizes the love of her children can sustain her and give perfect love. Viri realizes too late that all he ever wanted was his children "to grow up in the happiest of homes." Which, as it turns out, was not their fate. He tries again by marrying badly to a woman who is not just obsessive but finds his role in her life as her only joy. He is wrecked by the anxiety of failure.

In the end, the novel has some moments of feeling slight. I was thrilled by the set-up for Franca, one of their daughters, but felt her character dropped off. We see her lose her virginity to someone she's met once and is too nervous to hold a conversation with so the result is chilling. Then, she peters out for the rest of the book returning but always at a great distance. The other daughter, Danny, is explored a touch more than Franca. Still, these girls are the descendants. I have to argue that there was an opportunity missed in their development.

Examples of favorite sentences and passages:

"Life is weather. Life is meals. Lunches on a blue checked cloth on which salt has spilled. The smell of tobacco. Brie, yellow apples, wood-handled knives."

"Her father's suits were laid on the bed to be taken by the Salvation Army, his shirts, his empty shoes. The earth had thudded down on the crypt where he lay. All the ornaments, hats, belts, rings--how plain and cheap they seemed without him."

"Beneath their brilliance women have a power as stars have gravity. In the bottom of her cup lay the warm, rich silt."

This book isn't for everyone. It's a book for writers. And readers who are willing to spend some time and absorb slowly. The story is an abstract one that is not driven by twists and intricate plotting. The story leisurely unspools. It's a work of art.

(less)

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Feb 24, 2011 Amanda Rose rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book felt like a punch to the gut. When I finished it, I felt as though I'd lost people who had very quickly become an important part of my life. I have never read anything that more accurately and intimately described the truth about relationships. I skimmed other reviews by readers, and noticed that a few people pointed out that the characters are somewhat unlikeable. This is a personal quirk of mine, but I have very rarely really liked characters, or even people I meet, that are genuinel...more

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Nov 11, 2010 Jennifer rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read this book about 15 years ago -- long before I was married and/or had kids. Salter is just a beautiful writer and I recall loving how he put words together even though the subject was foreign and the characters not all that likeable. I was just thinking about this book recently and then started the book by Julia Glass (which I'm loving) and there was a quote from this book at the front. So I'm putting it back on my to-read list which I don't do very often.

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Sep 23, 2012 Stu Sherman rated it 5 of 5 stars

Amazing, amazing, amazing. This is one of the greatest books I have ever read, right up there with Housekeeping and Ulysses. It follows the lives of a couple, Viri and Nedra, as well as the lives of their two daughters, over the course of about twenty years. The book starts with them as a young couple with young children. They live an easy and privileged life in upstate New York, alongside the Hudson river--which itself it as major character in the book along with the light and the seasons. Ther...more

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Jul 19, 2011 Matt Simmons rated it 5 of 5 stars

It is exceptionally easy, and perhaps even exceptionally banal, to call James Salter's writing “lyrical.” Yet, that is exactly the feeling you get in reading Light Years—that of the lyric, the poem. While “poetic” in its language throughout, the novel feels most acutely “lyrical” for its first half, like a series of poems, somehow and perhaps only slightly related, brief glimpses into and mediations on the lives of an interesting-yet-venal people, concerned with their lovers, with the “fascinati...more It is exceptionally easy, and perhaps even exceptionally banal, to call James Salter's writing “lyrical.” Yet, that is exactly the feeling you get in reading Light Years—that of the lyric, the poem. While “poetic” in its language throughout, the novel feels most acutely “lyrical” for its first half, like a series of poems, somehow and perhaps only slightly related, brief glimpses into and mediations on the lives of an interesting-yet-venal people, concerned with their lovers, with the “fascinating” and “interesting” companions and acquaintances they make, who are artist, bon-vivants, and other such stock characters from the great novels of the lives of the well-to-do. But, like so much great poetry, there is a deep, astounding darkness beneath of the surface, a surface that soon loses the ability to hide anything, and the darkness announces itself, triumphant. And then, something changes.

We have been, throughout the novel, disconnected from the characters; Salter effects this, through, amongst other techniques, the odd, unfamiliar names. It is not that they are simply not Anglo names, but rather that they are names totally unfamiliar, without place, without gender, without relation to the world; these are enigmatic names for enigmatic people. Yet, we suddenly feel heartbroken, we feel their pain, we experience their darkness alongside them. And this novel of affairs and dinner parties becomes a novel of the dangers of pursuing ones ostensible dreams, of being seduced by those things that we seek for in life, but that ultimately stand outside of life. The early meeting with the tailor, Franca's father's death, Danny's first love, Viri's time in Rome—these are unforgettable scenes, moments that rank among some of the greatest I've read. This is a novel that is romantic and painful, funny and erotic, deeply sexual, yet ultimately conservative in its morality. It is a tricky book; it seems so beautiful but so forgettable for the longest time, but that comes around and forces you to live inside its dream world. And like a powerful dream, some things are inevitably confused and forgotten, but some are always there, and the feel, the sensation of the dream is with you forever.(less)

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May 01, 2013 Ann rated it 4 of 5 stars

Seldom has the evanescence of life, the passing from the years of light to the darkness of aging and death been assayed with such poetic, graceful writing. Salter also reminds the reader that, "One of the last great realizations is that life will not be what you dreamed"; a painful turning point for each of us.

Salter frames his meditation on mortality within the confines of the marriage of Nedra and Viri Berland. The perfect couple - darling children, witty friends - until infidelities and mount...more

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Apr 27, 2013 Sara rated it 3 of 5 stars

I feel oddly disappointed in myself for not enjoying this more. Some of it may have something to do with having to read most of it on the subway and it's terrible for subway reading. There's no plot you can immediately jump back into. The language is beautiful, highly poetic, but often to the point of seeming overworked, at least to me. It's hard for sentences to stand out if all of them are surrounded by other sentences whittled down to their most perfect parts. And I hate to say it, the charac...more

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Nov 14, 2012 Brandee rated it 3 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I started out really liking this book; I like reading books about marriage. Salter's style first struck me as kind of dreamy or light, which was refreshing. I like his descriptions and his style was perfect for accurately introducing the characters to us, with their interesting life, artistic ways, and sensual environment. What made the book kind of start to disappoint me were the affairs: how timid Viri seemed about his wife and how unaware Nedra was of her husband. If these two could just get...more

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Dec 26, 2010 Hannah rated it 4 of 5 stars

Although I'm drawn to stories of suburban disillusion/tragedy, I read them only occasionally. Dying dreams, the confines of conformity, frustrated idealism...these themes get old quickly; they make me feel old and worn, and leave a proverbial bad taste in my proverbial mouth.

Even so, my interest is always piqued when I find another such novel, so I decided to read Light Years, even though my "depressing, mid-century lit" quota was filled for the year.

It was similar, yes, to Updike's novels(etc...more

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Jan 29, 2013 Sasha Martinez added it

Shelves: skimmed-or-abandoned, books-read-in-2013

The book was in her lap; she had read no further. The power to change one’s life comes from a paragraph, a lone remark. The lines that penetrate us are slender, like the flukes that live in river water and enter the bodies of swimmers. She was excited, filled with strength. The polished sentences had arrived, it seemed, like so many other things, at just the right time. How can we imagine what our lives should be without the illumination of others?

She laid the book down open beside a few others.

...more

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Jul 30, 2012 Jeremy rated it 3 of 5 stars

I just finished this. It was okay. I read it because I liked A Sport and A Pastime, but I think that one is a better book.

I will just say that you read James Salter's books because the prose is very vivid, rich, and yet very spare at the same time. His style is extremely similar to Fitzgerald and Hemingway. If you like those writers, you'll like Salter.

This book is about a married couple, and their marriage falls apart. Though it's not so much about the marriage and the reasons why it fell apar...more

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May 16, 2013 Suzanne rated it 5 of 5 stars

I'd read a couple reviews of this before buying it. The reviewers said it was beautifully written, but the author was a "writer's writer's writer", and also that the novel seemed to float in time- had no references to political or social events that might place it. Huh! I found it to be not only beautifully written, but very smooth to read. There was nothing about the author's use of language that bothered me in the least- quite the contrary, his words were pure delightful pleasure that told the...more

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May 05, 2013 Delphine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Courtesy: Alan

Where has James Salter been all these years and why haven't I heard of him before reading this miraculous novel?

While I can't answer that question I can marvel at the command of language and the spareness of his prose. The images he creates are awe inspiring and at the same time eerily frightening.

This is not easy or safe writing. The characters seem simple yet mysterious and their path has a dark, existential quality that brings to mind Camus.

Salter seems at ease at throwing yo...more

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Oct 28, 2007 Ann M rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction-literary-and-mainstream

Trying again. Good dialogue, but do I care about these people? This is old white guy lit, big time. I wanted to give it two stars, but I was not motivated to finish it. Boring.

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Jun 15, 2010 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a beautiful, sad book. Its beauty is that of a winter landscape, something frozen, except, there is no hope of a thaw. What is never mentioned is that these people are completely inured by their wealth and social class. They are "good" people who take pleasure in raising children, loving (in and outside the marriage bond), learning and having friends. But they have no purpose to their lives which are like one long, indolent afternoon and the result is something very, very sad. This is a...more

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May 05, 2012 Nick Duretta rated it 5 of 5 stars

In concise, elegant prose, Salter shows us a New York couple's marriage as it steadily erodes through the years amid growing children, evolving friendships, brief affairs and the simple changes of a person's needs as they become older. Neither Ari (an architect of middling success) nor his wife are bad people; they're the kind you'd like to have over for dinner. They're bright and knowledgeable without being snobbish about it. But at the end of their journey together neither is particularly happ...more

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Dec 08, 2009 Travis rated it 4 of 5 stars

A couple of authors were gushing about this book at a recent event and it sounded intriguing. From a craft sense I understand the praise. The man is a unique stylist -- precise, lyrical and deft. The convincing way he describes characters by certain habits or flaws is also brilliant. And the way time shapes & binds the characters-- undeniably great writing. How he ends chapters is a poetic wonder.

But I'm not sure how much interest readers unlike the cast (moneyed, fond of long meals & af...more

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May 16, 2013 Andrew Tolve rated it 5 of 5 stars

For me it was Steinbeck when I was a kid, Hemingway as a young man, Salter as an adult. I don't think there's any living writer who can rival him. He's one of those guys who makes your jaw drop every page. Every word is necessary, every image vivid, every character crushing. "Light Years" feels similar to "A Sport and a Pastime," only here the central focus is not a fleeting affair but rather a marriage, which frankly makes for a more heartbreaking work. There are children. There are adults. The...more

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May 10, 2013 Claudia Putnam rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: literary-fiction

It took me a while to decide what I wanted to say about this, and I'm still not sure. The style is brilliant, of course, though after a while I felt it wasn't enough to carry the book. Still, it's the main reason for the 4 stars. I wanted to give it somewhere between 3 and 4 stars.

I haven't read ANY Salter for some reason, though I have others on order, so I can't tell what's up with the racial stuff, whether he has some uber-purpose here or what. Maybe he's just oblivious and therefore a jerk....more It took me a while to decide what I wanted to say about this, and I'm still not sure. The style is brilliant, of course, though after a while I felt it wasn't enough to carry the book. Still, it's the main reason for the 4 stars. I wanted to give it somewhere between 3 and 4 stars.

I haven't read ANY Salter for some reason, though I have others on order, so I can't tell what's up with the racial stuff, whether he has some uber-purpose here or what. Maybe he's just oblivious and therefore a jerk. I went straight from this book to The Human Stain, which really *grapples,* ballsily, with racial issues. I dunno...

Anyhow, beautiful book, about beautiful people, living beautiful lives, in a beautiful home, in a beautiful setting, with beautiful friends. WTF is wrong with them?

We don't know. But everything apparently.

They just can't... quite... come together.

They love each other, they want to love each other. They want to love their lives. But somehow they are dissatisfied. With themselves, with each other, with their world. Europe! That's where they want to go! But somehow they never get there till it's too late. Meanwhile, they have affairs. Why? We don't know. Do they know? Who knows. His is secret, hers apparently are open, but I didn't realize this till one paragraph about 3/4 through. Another couple, great friends of theirs, do not marry, and he is well-loved by the women in general, but at one point he speaks about his attraction for other types of women but says how unfair it would be to his lover, to cheat on her for such superficial reasons. A foil for Viri, the male MC, who does cheat on his wife, for superficial reasons.

I suppose one of the points is how lazy and superficial these people are for all their pretensions to intellectualism and artistic leanings. They never strive, they never fight for anything. At several points Salter describes Nedra in tones that are meant to be awed, worshipful, but all he can come up with are This is a woman who has read, who has thought... I'm as much about reading as the next woman, but I can't imagine that Salter, or anyone views reading as the essence of character, as a contribution to society. Nedra is no Hilary Clinton. She is not a painter, a dancer, a founder of charities, a teacher, a scientist.

And everyone seems to see Viri as the ultimate in pussies, but why? He can't earn any money, even Nedra feels. And yet she has nothing but leisure. What is her problem? She has a maid, a huge house, a sports car (Viri will never give me money, she complains to her friends, lying at the beach house, which they rent for months at a time, every summer), I need a large house, a car... She has dinner parties with interesting people, trips to Europe, blah blah. At the end, she is writing children's books in a tiny apartment. She could have been doing that in her large house with the maid all along. What an idiot.

The crux of the novel, it seems to me, is a very small section when Viris and Nedra go to Europe. They go to England and stay with an English couple ("American women are always studying things," they laugh at Nedra, though it's not clear what Englishwomen do with their leisuretime, if they have it, which one presumes they might). This couple says, Oh, America, we had such hopes for you, and there you went so quickly and slid into the darkness. What do you mean? Viri and Nedra ask. It's never fully explained. There are the English couple, sitting in the shadows, their white, white faces so round and well, white. Their empire in tatters. The couple hale and fit, but their world fragile and shadowed.

And so, this is what I think we have to make of Light Years: America, so spoiled, so sure of its ease, so unwilling to strive, so quick to be dissatisfied with its glorious lot in life, perhaps dissatisfied BECAUSE everything was so easy, blew it somehow, and came apart at the seams. It had to get distracted, it had to play around with unimportant things, it had to get narcissistic and wrapped up with its own beauty. And then it turned around and it didn't have the house on the Hudson anymore, and it couldn't afford the maid, and the (did Salter really mean to say this??) brown guy was screwing its wife, and next thing you know no one knows whom to love and what to work for anymore or even what's beautiful. The light years are over, all too quickly. (less)

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Aug 07, 2012 Danica marked it as sadly-abandoned

This book represents everything I most hate about literary fiction. Seriously, guys.

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Mar 26, 2013 Mike Polizzi rated it 3 of 5 stars

Open a J Crew catalog, soak in the splendid appearances then notice that the models age, have children and die. Except- the details feel as if they've been lived from within- at times stirring and personal, often sentimental and frustratingly empty of character- the only true character is the narrator's voice- it demands beauty, more beauty and occasional grit. The narrator and Conrad, the shirt maker. The great tensions in the book reside between the impression and the actual- one has a sense t...more

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Feb 02, 2013 Sybil rated it 5 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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May 10, 2010 Joan Winnek rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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About James Salter

James Salter (b. 1925) is a novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. Salter grew up in New York City and was a career officer and Air Force pilot until his mid-thirties, when the success of his first novel (The Hunters, 1957) led to a fulltime writing career. Salter’s potent, lyrical prose has earned him acclaim from critics, readers, and fellow novelists. His novel A Sport and a Pastime (1...more

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Quotes from Light Years

“Their life is mysterious, it is like a forest; from far off it seems a unity, it can be comprehended, described, but closer it begins to separate, to break into light and shadow, the density blinds one. Within there is no form, only prodigious detail that reaches everywhere: exotic sounds, spills of sunlight, foliage, fallen trees, small beasts that flee at the sound of a twig-snap, insects, silence, flowers.
And all of this, dependent, closely woven, all of it is deceiving. There are really two kinds of life. There is, as Viri says, the one people believe you are living, and there is the other. It is this other which causes the trouble, this other we long to see.” — 17 people liked it

“The book was in her lap; she had read no further. The power to change one’s life comes from a paragraph, a lone remark. The lines that penetrate us are slender, like the flukes that live in river water and enter the bodies of swimmers. She was excited, filled with strength. The polished sentences had arrived, it seemed, like so many other things, at just the right time. How can we imagine what our lives should be without the illumination of the lives of others?” — 8 people liked it

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