Summer Light (Paperback, New Ed)

First-novelist Robinson takes a calculated risk, cruising us through the much-sailed seas of baby-boomer angst: love and divorce, money and guilt. But what makes it work here is the care the author takes with her characters: they are bumbling and appealing and, sometimes, dizzily off the mark as they struggle to get their bearings. In a rented summer house in Maine, 29-year-old Laura spends most of her time not dealing with her marital status. Separated from her difficult, straying husband Nat, she and her young son have moved in - uneasily - with her lover Ward, who wants to marry her. Also along in the summer house are Laura's older sister, Sarah, who by virtue of her serene competence has always made Laura feel inadequate and spoiled, and Sarah's family: husband Richie and two bickering, blossoming adolescent daughters. Amidst a series of small dramas - touched off by such simple subjects as kitty litter, tofu, and a friendly gesture to a not-so-ex-husband - relationships are sorted (or slugged) out, resolutions reached. If there are no big surprises here, it doesn't much matter. Robinson's strength is in guiding us through the sweet muddle of everyday life. For the most part, she steers clear of sinkholes - although in one silly misstep, she devotes much of a chapter to the activity of washing a new BMW and, without apparent irony, has Laura, Ward and Richie stand admiring the car in its "moment of flawless radiance." But this is forgivable foolishness. These characters are too smart to stick with such easy icons. And Robinson is too good to let them. All in all: a fine tour through thirty something territory. (Kirkus Reviews)

Roxana Robinson's great gift for the telling detail and strong sense of the emotional shoals lurking just beneath even the calmest surface have inspired comparisons to literary greats like John Cheever, Henry James, and Edith Wharton. In her first novel, we meet Laura, a 29-year-old wife, mother, sister, friend, lover, and erstwhile photographer whose life is painfully out of focus. A month's vacation on the Maine coast with her son, her lover, Ward, and her sister's family is supposed to be an idyllic period of sustenance and calm, but for Laura, who believes that "entropy governed the world, the universe, and the dinner hour," it turns into the ultimate test of her ability to trust herself and others.
With trademark intensity and a deft touch for character and place, Robinson creates a perceptive, believable, and gently humorous portrait of an individual "waiting for something that would set her life in order." Laura is as much a study of light and shadow as the photographs she takes. Beautiful but insecure, talented but unwilling to take risks, loved but unable to make a commitment, she is paralyzed by fear and locked into a stasis that Ward is no longer willing to accept. "You don't dare take a stand on anything," he tells her. "You're so terrified of failure you don't dare do anything." When her estranged husband arrives for a weekend visit, however, the emotional collision rocks Laura's inaction, causing a tiny shake of the kaleidoscope that creates a vastly different pattern. The image is razor sharp at last: "As though she were changing lenses, as though she had suddenly discovered another light source," she sees that her life is her own. That new understanding empowers her to make a symbolic -- and a literal -- leap of faith that saves her own life and the lives of those she loves.

General

Imprint:	University Press of New England
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	August 1995
First published:	August 1995
Authors:	Roxana Robinson
Dimensions:	216 x 137 x 13mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	212
Edition:	New Ed
ISBN-13:	978-0-87451-738-5
Categories:	Books > Fiction > General & literary fiction > Modern fiction
LSN:	0-87451-738-9
Barcode:	9780874517385

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