My final read from our recent journey was Ben Ehrenreich’s Ether, another City Lights acquisition. Here, first, is the description from the back cover:
A bearded man in a badly soiled suit known only as The Stranger wanders an apocalyptic landscape on the fringes of a dying metropolis, looking for a way to “get back on top.” Thwarted and rejected at every turn by old friends and strangers alike
I came here to write a review of another book I recently finished, but soon realized that I never completed my round of reviews from my last library trip. My mother was right: I’d lose my head if it wasn’t attached.
Ah well. Better late than never, right?
I alluded to this book in my review of Alan Lightman’s Ghost: A Novel. Even though my initial excitement regarding Lightman diminished slightly from Einstein’s Dreams to Ghost, I was still enamored enough of his style and the way his mind processed ideas that I wanted to read more. Reunion was the only other Lightman novel in stock at the local library, so I quickly added it to my stack.
Yet again, I find myself visiting the concept/complaint of the “well-worn trope.” There is no new thing under the sun and certain stories have been and will continue to be retold until the end of existence itself. One of these stories is that of time travel, of returning to a place, a person, a moment in our pasts and…what? Changing it? Reliving it? Erasing it? Cherishing it?
In Reunion, Lightman takes his protagonist
I actually have a few recently finished books waiting in the wings for their big blog review debut. I’m hoping that now that my schedule is slowly clearing itself, I’ll have a little more time to work on them.
Hopefully not too much time though. Ahem.
Now, on to the first review. I read Alan Lightman’s novel Einstein’s Dreams last year and loved it so much that I knew I wanted to read more by this author. I was, therefore, pleasantly surprised when I discovered two more of his books at my local library.
The first of these two books that I read was Lightman’s 2007 offering, Ghost: A Novel. The story follows protagonist David Kurtzweil, a former bank employee who, after being laid off, finds new employment at a funeral home. As one can easily deduce from the title, David has an inexplicable encounter of a possibly paranormal variety while at his new place of employment.
Actually, one of the things that I loved most about this book was that Lightman doesn’t at first reveal what David saw. He keeps David’s experience a mystery, alluding to it, circumnavigating it, flirting with it…but never quite meeting it face-to-face. It takes a delicate touch to be able to write a novel called Ghost without actually discussing…the ghost.
Unfortunately, Lightman does finally reveal what David witnessed, and I have to admit, it was a bit of a letdown to me. I think it’s because I was hoping that Lightman would simply not reveal what David saw. I think the further along the story progressed and the longer Lightman remained vague, the more I was convinced that the novel could only possibly work if the reveal never occurred. Perhaps that was my own failing as a reader. I don’t know.
I do know that Lightman once again enraptured me with his clean, elegant prose. His style is stark and simple, extremely reminiscent of Hemingway in many ways.
Unlike Einstein’s Dreams, this novel is a little less stream-of-consciousness, far more regimented, and a lot longer. Perhaps a bit too long. I found myself growing weary of some of the plot twists toward the end, but, again, this might be a reflection of my response to the reveal that I had hoped would never arrive.
Final Verdict: I don’t know whether or not I would ever want to re-read this book. While I very much enjoyed the experience on a holistic level, the devil is, indeed, in the details…and the few negatives that I have detailed in this review are enough to convince me not to purchase a copy, but to keep this in mind for a future library revisit.
I still think that Lightman is very much worth reading. I still treasure the experience of reading Einstein’s Dreams, and I promise that the next Lightman book that I review here will be a much more ebullient posting than this one.
Alan Lightman
