Reunion

Reunion

by Alan P . Lightman (Author)

Synopsis

At fifty-two, Charles is a professor at a minor 'leafy little college', a once promising poet, divorced, admiring of passion but without passion himself. Out of impulse, he decides to attend his thirtieth college reunion - and there magically witnesses a replay of his last year in college. Thirty years ago, Charles, then a romantic and tender twenty-two year-old, had fallen obsessively in love with a beautiful dancer. Drawn back into his past like a moth to a flame, he recalls his love affair played out amidst the social and political chaos of the late 1960s. Struggling with memories that often appear contradictory, Charles confronts once again the series of devastating events that forever changed his life.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 240
Edition: First Edition
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published: 21 Jul 2003

ISBN 10: 0747565740
ISBN 13: 9780747565741
Book Overview: REUNION confirms Alan Lightman's stature as a writer of singular voice and vision By the author of internationally best-selling EINSTEIN'S DREAMS and THE DIAGNOSIS Alan Lightman is a National Book Award Finalist

Media Reviews
Elegant . . . spare, economical and charged with meaning . -- The New York Times Book Review One of a handful of writers in America capable of injecting the necessary quietude into his prose. . . . Reunion is that rare thing in this age: a genuine work of art. -- Denver Post A skillful exercise in the evocation of memory and loss. . . . Lightman's delicate prose turns [Reunion] into a fascinating study. -- The Washington Post Book World Marvelously written. . . . A worthy addition to Lightman's work. -- Rocky Mountain News Lightman's prose leaps and twirls, circles his subjects and raises them up. If Degas or Manet had written prose it would read like this. . . . Reunion is that rare thing in this age: a genuine work of art. -- Denver Post A skillful exercise in the evocation of memory and loss. . . . Lightman's delicate prose turns [Reunion] into a fascinating study. -- The Washington Post Book World Reunion seeks . . . to plumb life's most complicated and enduring relationship: that between who one was and who one is. . . . Reunion most powerfully explores the seductions and betrayals of young love. --The New York Times Undeniably affecting. . . . Memorably lovely. . . . Lightman's lyrical meditation on aging and nostalgia [will] hit home for just about any reader. -- San Francisco Chronicle Haunting. . . . He has a Proustian concern for manipulations of time and memory . . . [a] melancholy grasp of the sovereign ineluctability of time, that 'hour of eternity.' . . . Such a rueful consciousness is a pleasure to witness. -- Boston Globe A profoundly human story, rich in depth and nuance. . . . Lightman writes witha lightness, a lyrical understatedness that belies the underlying depths and complexities of the novel. . . . Reunion is the work of a great writer. -- The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Prose both luminous and precise. . . . The images of lightness and beauty and grace, of complexity and obsession that Lightman conjures through Charles' vision of his lover make us participate in Charles' yearning. -- The San Diego Union Tribune A subtle and haunting novel. . . . In Lightman's hands, the act of remembrance becomes a meditation on time, loss, and the ultimate selfishness of love. His writing gets under your skin precisely because of its measured and undemonstrative tone. -- Daily Mail (London) An achingly beautiful story about memory and the loss of passion. . . . Lightman succeeds in writing an inventive, unsentimental love story. -- The Newark Star-Ledger Uncommonly rich imagination . . . a masterful touch. -- Rocky Mountain News
Author Bio
Alan Lightman was born in Memphis Tennessee, and educated at Princeton and the California Institute of Technology. His previous books include three novels, EINSTEIN'S DREAMS, GOOD BENITO, and THE DIAGNOSIS; a collection of essays and fables, DANCE FOR TWO; and several book on science. He is an adjunct professor of humanities at MIT. He lives in Boston.