ralentina reviewed Light Years by James Salter
Straight couples getting together and breaking apart
2 stars
Viri and Nedra's life is an understated tragedy - a sequence of moments, encounters, and missed occasions. Their lives are full of love (affection more than passion, but they both know both), small joys, friends, and yet deeply sad. Perhaps you could say they are some sort of anti-heroes: eternally aspiring to something more, never quite going to look for it. Their lives unfold as in a vacuum, impermeable to what is going on outside of suburban New York. Everything about them is somehow beautiful - even their shortsightedness and insincerity. Characters pop in and out of the picture, in a way that is quite realistic (people tend to do that in real life), but frustrating. The language is beautiful, but sometimes it seem to linger on details for no reason.