Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!

Create Free Account

October Light

3.9/5 ( ratings)

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. New Directions is excited to reissue the Gardner classics, beginning with October Light, a complex relationship rendered in a down-to-earth narrative.

October Light is one of John Gardner's masterworks. The penniless widow of a once-wealthy dentist, Sally Abbot now lives in the Vermont farmhouse of her older brother, 72-year-old James Page. Polar opposites in nearly every way, their clash of values turns a bitter corner when the exacting and resolute James takes a shotgun to his sister's color television set. After he locks Sally up in her room with the trashy "blockbuster" novel that has consumed her , the novel-within-the-novel becomes an echo chamber providing glimpses into the history of the family that spawned these bizarre, sad, and stubborn people. Gardner uses the turbulent siblings as a stepping-off point from which he expands upon the lives of their extended families, and the rural community that surrounds them. He also engages larger issues of how liberals and conservatives define themselves, and considers those moments when life transcends all their arguments.

Language: English

Pages: 399

Format: Paperback

Publisher: New Directions

Release: October 17, 2005

ISBN: 0811216373

ISBN 13: 9780811216371

October Light

3.9/5 ( ratings)

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. New Directions is excited to reissue the Gardner classics, beginning with October Light, a complex relationship rendered in a down-to-earth narrative.

October Light is one of John Gardner's masterworks. The penniless widow of a once-wealthy dentist, Sally Abbot now lives in the Vermont farmhouse of her older brother, 72-year-old James Page. Polar opposites in nearly every way, their clash of values turns a bitter corner when the exacting and resolute James takes a shotgun to his sister's color television set. After he locks Sally up in her room with the trashy "blockbuster" novel that has consumed her , the novel-within-the-novel becomes an echo chamber providing glimpses into the history of the family that spawned these bizarre, sad, and stubborn people. Gardner uses the turbulent siblings as a stepping-off point from which he expands upon the lives of their extended families, and the rural community that surrounds them. He also engages larger issues of how liberals and conservatives define themselves, and considers those moments when life transcends all their arguments.

Language: English

Pages: 399

Format: Paperback

Publisher: New Directions

Release: October 17, 2005

ISBN: 0811216373

ISBN 13: 9780811216371

More books from Tom Bissell

The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made

4.2/5 ( ratings)

Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter

3.5/5 ( ratings)

Magic Hours: Essays on Creators and Creation

3.7/5 ( ratings)

Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia

3.8/5 ( ratings)

This Lovely Life

3.9/5 ( ratings)

Apostle: Travels Among the Tombs of the Twelve

3.5/5 ( ratings)

Who Can Save Us Now?: Brand-New Superheroes and Their Amazing (Short) Stories

3.3/5 ( ratings)

God Lives in St. Petersburg and Other Stories

3.8/5 ( ratings)

The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam

3.9/5 ( ratings)

McSweeney's #11

3.9/5 ( ratings)

Creative Types and Other Stories

3.2/5 ( ratings)

Rate this book!

Write a review?