I'm not really sure how I feel about this one. A marriage dissolving slowly in upstate New York, with occasional excursions for self-discovery, romance or Bohemian social life in New York City and some sophisticated European watering holes. Gentle musings on the inevitable decay and death of ourselves and everything we love. While Salter's writing is superb in many ways, the novel dwells in an aimless and tepid ennui throughout. Perhaps that's his point: that's life?

If so, I was grateful for his frequent insertion of languorous descriptions of the food in the rooms through which these lives ebbed: they were generally more enticing than the characters.

"In the early afternoon they had chocolate and pears . . . Lunches on a blued checked cloth on which salt has spilled. The smell of tobacco. Brie, yellow apples, wood-handled knives . . . The dishes were set on the table and uncovered: shrimp and peas, braised chicken, rice . . . A cake with orange icing . . . something light: a boiled potato, cold meat, the remains of a bottle of wine . . . Beneath a wide umbrella Nedra spread chicken, eggs, endive, tomatoes, paté, cheese, bread, cucumbers, butter and wine . . . the peel of lemon beside the empty cups . . . They were having Meusault, fromages, pastries from Leonard's . . . The table was laid in the kitchen: Kulich, a sweet, Russian cake, chunks of feta, dark bread and butter, fruit . . . The dinner, she announced when they were seated at the table, was Italian. Petti di pollo . . . They ate like a family, noisy, devoted, they passed plates freely . . .

Salter himself suggests at one point, "Life is meals." In the end, I cared less about Nedra and Viri, his slowly deliquescing couple, and more about how I could enjoy their "pleasures of the table". ( )

Some amazing imagery but I had a hard time with the characters--too beautiful and too bougie. Since it addresses women's lib, it must have been a startling book in its time. ( )

L'ho finito da un po' di giorni e non è facile scrivere un commento. In realtà non credo di essermi ancora costruita la mia opinione, penso tante cose diverse, ma non c'è un filo che le unisca. Cominciamo dal fatto che il libro si intitoli Una perfetta felicità e tutto, davvero tutto, io l'ho trovato permeato di tristezza. Non una cosa manifesta, o plateale, una sorta di nota di fondo quasi impercettibile ma sempre presente. Ho maturato quasi l'idea che l'eleganza, quella vera, profonda, sia un tutt'uno con la tristezza. Ad ogni modo questo romanzo ha una potenza evocativa fortissima, con poche pennellate costruisce delle scene nitide e grandiose, visualizzavo quello che leggevo come stessi guardando un film, il grande fiume al tramonto, le pareti accoglienti della casa, mi sembrava quasi di sentire le tavole del pavimento sotto i piedi, di bere ai loro bicchieri, sentire il profumo che emanava dai loro capelli. Non è una storia avvincente, perché non è quel tipo di romanzo. Credo che anch'io mi sarei innamorata di Nedra e allo stesso modo, dopo essermi ubriacata di lei, lei mi avrebbe distrutta. No, non lo avrebbe fatto apposta, era la sua natura, ricercare, con ingenua crudeltà, la propria felicità. ( )

There are the books that remain relevant and speak to readers decades, or even centuries after they were first published. There are books that sink quietly into obscurity a few years after they first appeared, and then there is this book. First published in 1975, it was recently reissued and I ran into in an article, described as an example of very fine writing and a beautiful portrayal of a dying marriage. Reader, it is neither of those things. The writing is less fine than flowery, which is nice in small doses and less so when it serves to grind the story to halt. And the story begins after the relationship between Viri and Nedra had become one of co-parents and co-hosts only. The book instead details their lives from when their children are small and they are going through the motions, united only in their love of their children, in entertaining and in love for the very nice farmhouse they own near enough to Manhattan as make frequent short trips into town easy. I'm a little envious of the lifestyle they enjoyed on the salary of a single unsuccessful architect, with long trips to Europe and expensive wines routine, but the book is set sometime in the early sixties, when I guess no one worried about money. That it stays in that same time frame despite spanning decades in the lives of Viri and Nedra is something to just not worry about.

He was a Jew, the most elegant Jew, the most romantic, a hint of weariness in his features, the intelligent features everyone envied, his hair dry, his clothes oddly threadbare--that is to say, not overly cared for, a button missing, the edge of a cuff stained, his breath faintly bad like the breath of an uncle who is no longer well. He was small. He had soft hands, and no sense of money, almost none at all. He was an albino in that, a freak. A Jew without money is like a dog without teeth.

I'm fully in favor of judging a work by the standards of its time, and will give a lot of leeway to the novels of bygone times, but yikes. There's a lot to critique about modern society but the way non-white people and women were talked about in this book was jarring. There's a repeated theme that the best thing for girls (and the girls in question are still in high school) is to be "educated" by an older man, a belief spouted even by the mother of these children. There's also a sexual fascination for a girl beginning puberty and a related distaste for aging women. Because this is a book formed mainly of conversations at dinner parties and of various characters talking about their ideas, certain beliefs that tend not to be spoken of in public today are discussed in detail and brought up more than once.

"You've been married." He handed her a glass. "I can see it. Women become dry if they live alone. I don't think it needs explaining. It's demonstrable. Even if it's not a good marriage, it keeps them from dehydrating."

There's good things in this book. There's good descriptions of what a good dinner party looked like for bohemian intellectuals, and descriptions of a very nice farmhouse. The bit set in Rome was interesting, although the plot-line of the old guy getting worshipped by a much younger and beautiful Italian woman were perhaps unlikely. Of course, the man described as having "the face of ancient politicians, of pensioners, the wrinkles looked black as ink" is forty-seven.

Anyway, Light Years is considered a "modern classic" and greater minds than my own think it's important as more than as an odd artifact of history. ( )

I picked this one up after seeing it mentioned in another book, but really wasn't what I was expecting at all. Rather, it was a slow, melancholy, meandering river of a story, and not something that particularly appealed to me, though I appreciated the detail and the dialogue. ( )