Last night I finished reading James Salter's "Light Years". I was doing some cataloging at work and ran across this book. The cover reminded me of William Faulkner (for a very good reason: Vintage International published this edition, and they've done a lot of Faulkner's books as well), so of course after I saw that he won the PEN/Faulkner award I had to check it out.
While beautifully written, like "Lolita" (another good one I haven't reread in awhile...hmm), with lovely, descriptive language, the story itself was sad in a not so good way. It's a story of a married couple. Right from the beginning you sense they are not happy in their marriage, although it's hard to understand why. They both seem like nice people, and they have a lovely house and wonderful kids, friends, pets, the whole package. They also have affairs, and after twenty some years of marriage they get a divorce. The wife, Nedra, is always searching for something to make her life complete, and can never quite grasp it. Other men, traveling, all these things she thought she wanted while married to her husband don't make her happy once she has them. At least Salter didn't have her trying to get back together with him after some realization that leaving him was a big mistake. It seemed pretty realistic, but I just didn't care for it.
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