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Title: Reunion : A Novel by Alan Lightman ISBN: 0-375-42167-X Publisher: Pantheon Books Pub. Date: 22 July, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.78 (9 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Yet another unique, elegant novel for Lightman
Comment: "Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back? Is anything so pure? Or is love, by its nature, a reciprocity, like oceans and clouds, an evaporating of seawater and a replenishing by rain?" - from "Reunion," by Alan Lightman
Every few years, I get a little gift: a new novel from Alan Lightman. He doesn't publish fiction often, but when he does it is invariably worth reading. Best of all, each book is different from the others, while all are good.
Lightman's style is one of elegant language and a unique perspective. In each of his books, I find enjoyment simply in the words he uses, and how they flow together to form his narrative. In this, "Reunion" is no different -- Lightman's use of language is beautiful in and of itself.
In terms of the story itself, "Reunion" is about a man in his fifties who attends his 30th college graduation class reunion. In his own words, he lives a "comfortable" life -- he's divorced, with one child, and basically unremarkable, but "comfortable" nonetheless. At his reunion, he sees some people he remembers from college and meets a few new people. However, the real "reunion" of the story is when the main character (Charles) confronts his memories of the intense love affair he shared with a ballet dancer in his last year of school.
To be honest, this is a story that most of us have read before. It is Lightman's perspective on the story, and his keen sense of observation, which elevate "Reunion" above the trite and pithy messages of other, similar, stories. Lightman offers ideas and viewpoints which are rare in modern fiction -- perhaps even unique to this novel. As such, "Reunion" is a rare and valuable book.
Particularly memorable about "Reunion" is the way Lightman conveys Charles experiencing his memories. In several instances, he sees and hears what happened in different ways -- the idealized version that is what he thought would happen at the time, and the more human version which is probably closer to what really happened. The reader is left to question whether either "version" of Charles' memories is what really happened, or if true events were some unknown mixture of both versions. The subjectivity of memory is one of the major topics of the novel.
"Reunion" is a story about love, to be sure... and a touchingly bittersweet one at that. However, it is also about the changes and compromises that come with age, about the natural fallacy that personal perspective brings to events, and about the fragility of our memories. While it may not be my favorite of Lightman's books (that label still belongs to "Einstein's Dreams"), it is ceratinly an example of why I always look forward to a new Alan Lightman novel.
Rating: 4
Summary: A physicist-poet's wordly time machine
Comment: Beautiful, short, written with great clarity and directness. A story about love. youth, aging and the effects of life and passion on who we become.
Lightman is a theoretical physicist who has taught on faculties of physics and humanities. He is a best-selling,award winning, author of novels and essays. Reunion gives, mercifully,
no inkling of his technical background; instead its setting is ballet and poetry, love and time, and it reads like the work of a classicist, one with a rare appreciation for directness. The language Lightman uses is beautiful, yet unobtrusive. Though his treatment of time is fluid and modern, he eschews the modern penchant for making his words themselves principal actors.
Reunion is shortish, and compelling. The reader is drawn into the world and emotions of the narrator and finds himself flowing along the narrative until, with something like the speed at which a life observed will have passed, the story's done.
In response to criticisms of mawkishness and triteness of the tale from some other reviewers, I can only say that the most compelling and important situations are ones which recur in everyone's life and are common. Telling the stories in such a way as to touch the reader is the gift.
Rating: 1
Summary: Underwhelmed
Comment: I too found the book to be disappointing and incredible (plotline not believable). As a middle-aged man, I was attracted to this book as it was pitched as capturing a middle-aged man's reminiscences via a college reunion. However, Lightman seemed more interested in recounting Charles's experiences of his youth than in reviewing/reconsidering then now when he, presumably, could bring the wisdom gained from the passage of 30 years to his memories.
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Title: Evidence of Things Unseen : A Novel by Marianne Wiggins ISBN: 0684869691 Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 11 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: The Great Fire: A Novel by Shirley Hazzard ISBN: 0374166447 Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux Pub. Date: 14 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: Good Benito by Alan Lightman ISBN: 0446671606 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: 01 February, 1996 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: The Crossley Baby by JACQUELINE CAREY ISBN: 0345459903 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 01 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
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Title: Brick Lane: A Novel by Monica Ali ISBN: 0743243307 Publisher: Scribner Pub. Date: 09 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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