Will I love Light Years?

One of the most beautiful books I’ve read. Robert Stone, another one of my favorite writers, said that “[t]here’s only one subject for fiction or poetry or even a joke: how it is. In all the arts, the payoff is always the same: recognition. If it works, you say that’s real, that’s truth, that’s life, that’s the way things are. ‘There it is.’
By this metric, Salter’s Light Years is one of the most striking works of art I’ve encountered. Read it. This book captures how life, time, landscapes, inner lives, people, perceptions, and relationships move and change. Salter may… show more.

James Salter takes us deep into an exploration of the human condition and fragility of relationships with his narrative of the domestic life of an affluent American family with seemingly perfect lives on the surface. Through small details and observations of daily life, Salter brings us closely into their world—like voyeurs, we observe the fissures that simmer underneath their searches for happiness.  

We move through years of their lives as their marriage crumbles with the passage of time and the coexistence of love and betrayal.