Summer light - Hardcover
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.
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.
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5 3/8 x 8 1/2 trim. LC 95-32560
From the Back Cover:
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 John Cheever, Henry James, and Edith Wharton. In this new paperback edition of 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.
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- PublisherJ.M. Dent
- Publication date1987
- ISBN 10 0460047418
- ISBN 13 9780460047418
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages156
- Rating
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Summer Light
Published by
J M Dent & Sons, London
(1987)
ISBN 10: 0460047418
ISBN 13: 9780460047418
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Hardcover
First Edition
Quantity: 1
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Very Good+. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. First Edition; First Printing. Minor shelf wear to unclipped DJ. ; Blue cloth boards with gilt lettering to spine. Nice tight copy, no names or marks inside. DJ artwork by Elizabeth Pyle. ; 160 pages; Laura sometimes felt that she had spent her life listening to men telling her that things would work when she knew they wouldn't: her vacuum cleaner, her carburettor, her marriage. First there had been her father, then her husband, then her lover, and now Ward, who wants to be her second husband. In her usual fatalistic way, Laura decides to rent an old beach house in Maine with Ward and her sister's family and let events take their course. But over the summer she begins to realise it's time she grew up. Seller Inventory # 11008
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Seller Image
Summer Light
Published by
J M Dent & Sons Ltd, London
(1987)
ISBN 10: 0460047418
ISBN 13: 9780460047418
Used
Hardcover
First Edition
Quantity: 2
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Book Description Blue hardback cloth cover. Condition: VG : in very good condition. First Edition. 220mm x 140mm (9" x 6"). 156pp. With dust jacket. Seller Inventory # bbr236
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