October Light
By John Gardner
4/5
()
About this ebook
New York Times Bestseller and National Book Critics Circle Award Winner: A “dazzling” novel about the tumultuous relationship of two elderly siblings (Los Angeles Times).
James is a cantankerous and conservative seventy-two-year-old who has spent his life caring for the animals on his farm. His widowed older sister, Sally, has strong liberal ideals and a propensity for debate. When Sally’s bankruptcy forces her to move in with her brother, their lifelong feud quickly escalates—and Sally becomes a prisoner in her own room with nothing to survive on but apples and a trashy novel about marijuana smugglers. As Sally becomes immersed in the book, the story envelops the narrative of the siblings’ dysfunctional relationship, and Gardner explores a wide array of themes from human autonomy to self-definition to political extremism. The result is a tour de force of Gardner’s unique literary style at the height of his protean creative powers. This ebook features a new illustrated biography of John Gardner, including original letters, rare photos, and never-before-seen documents from the Gardner family and the University of Rochester Archives.John Gardner
John Gardner (1933–1982) was born in Batavia, New York. His critically acclaimed books include the novels Grendel, The Sunlight Dialogues, and October Light, for which he received the National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as several works of nonfiction and criticism such as On Becoming a Novelist. He was also a professor of medieval literature and a pioneering creative writing teacher whose students included Raymond Carver and Charles Johnson.
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Reviews for October Light
111 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5full of fine writing, exuberant writing, mock fiction, deep fiction, and wonderful characters.The siblings James and Sally are sharing the Bennington, Vermont family house in their old age. James inherited the farm, and Sally came to live with him when her money ran out after being widowed. It hasn't gone especially well. James is hard, determined to reject all modernity, and Sally is equally stubborn. When James turns his shotgun on her television, the war is on.Locked (and self-locked) in her upstairs bedroom, Sally spends her defiant isolation reading a tattered pulp fiction novel that she would never have touched in other circumstances. We read along with her, as she escapes from the domestic war into San Francisco drug running, sexual license and derring-do, constantly interrupted by missing pages. It is true escapist reading, but it's not only the room she is escaping from.The Vermont story expands to include James's daughter's family, his friends at the local bar, the local minister and guests, other people in the town, even some Bennington girls. And it expands into memories of childhood, courtship, married life, relatives lost one way or another, and the work and beauty of the land. Ultimately, it is not only the bedroom door that is unlocked.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5No one but John Gardner could take the disputes of an aging brother and sister and spin it into a major lesson about Life.One very cool aspect of this book is that there's a cheap novel (read by the sister) within this literary masterpiece :-)
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5When this novel came out, many critics raised caveats and cavills. The novel itself was a fine thing, brilliantly written, a brio performance. But, included in the novel is another novel, somewhat truncated, a "trashy novel." The presence of that book-in-a-book marred the serious work.Or so was said.I never quite bought it. The trashy novel was amusing in its way, and added a level of counterpoint to the main story, which is, in its own way, about censoroiusness about low culture, but itself censure from bigotry more than censure from considered judgment. The critics, in a sense, leapt into the author's trap.To what end, though?Well, leave all that aside. I rate this book highly for one scene, one chapter, which is exquisite. It's a party scene. A youngster brings out his French horn and nothing is quite the same again.The novel is supposed to reveal character. This novel reveals a whole lot more.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A bit self-serving and pious, but nonetheless beautiful.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When I first picked up October Light I thought it was going to be this old-timey story about two elderly siblings, living in seething resentment of one another in a farmhouse somewhere in Vermont. Admittedly, the book jacket didn't give me much to go on. So, the plot: James Page is angry at the world. So angry he can't stand his sister Sally's droning television and ends up silencing it with a shotgun blast. The shooting of the television sets in motion a series of events - James locks Sally in a room (but seemingly not her own room because she finds a trashy novel which doesn't belong to her). She becomes absorbed in said trashy novel; literally can't put it down and refuses to come out of the bedroom, even when her niece convinces James to free her. James doesn't care either way. In truth, he is not without deep rooted grief, a grief that has hardened to him. One son committed suicide and another died in an accident. James's sister, widowed and a polar opposite, does nothing to comfort him. The epic sibling battle lasts for the entire book and escalates to a catastrophic ending. I have to admit, I didn't enjoy the frame novel technique. Sally's trashy novel seemed to be the story Gardner really wanted to write. There is no explanation of how this trashy novel came to be in her room until the end. In truth, the story came alive for me in the last fifty pages.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The book within a book didn't work for me. I really don't know what Gardner was trying to do here. It's supposed to be pulp fiction, but it wasn't a typical thriller in style. I like straight narratives, so I think his "jazzing around" was not my speed. The main novel is filled with long, long passages of inner thoughts, and not a lot of action. It comes close to being a parody of the literary novel, overloaded with past guilt and death. Nickel Mountain, by the same author, remains one of my favorites.
Book preview
October Light - John Gardner
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