OCTOBER LIGHT

Rating:
Summary: the unbearable lightness of being
Review: I no longer give 5 stars to everything I like, but this is a book I return to again and again. It is a great 5 star book by a great 5 star author and a brilliant teacher (see The Art of Fiction). I hope it will be reissued so that more people can discover a gem of twentieth century writing. Do whatever you can to find a copy. It's a true hoot. Hopefully your local library will still have October Light in the collection.

John Gardner has created two great characters in 72 year old James Page and his older sister Sally Abbot. James, born on the fourth of July, is fiercely independent. His life's work has been caring for "dumb animals: horses, dairy cows, bees, pigs, chickens, and, indirectly, men. " James is truly shocked by Sally's disrespect for his opinions on the state of things in general. "Though he was never a great talker--certainly not in comparison to her, she could lecture your arm off--he knew a signifcant fact or two, knew by thunder, a truth or two--a truth or two that was still worth getting out of bed for."

Sally Page, a widow, has moved in with her brother James, because once the well to do wife of a dentist, she is now destitute. Sally does not adapt well to James' idea of a good life (one without television, nuclear energy, opinionated females, or home improvements.) "She'd preached him a sermon off television about the Equal Rights Amendment. He'd been amazed by all she said--shocked and flabbergasted, though he knew from magazines that there were people who believed such foolishness." They shake each other up, "She'd seemed as astonished by it all as he was, so astonished to discover what he thought that he almost came to doubt it," and ultimately survive themselves and each other.

The pleasure of laughing out loud one minute and then crying quietly in recognition almost in the next moment are among the literary gifts that Gardner bestows. Within the main story of the crises in James and Sally's relationship, precipitated by the murder of Sally's television set, is another lurid, slyly compelling trash novel, a "blockbuser," which Sally reads while locked up in her room subsisting on a diet of apples. Sally's relationship with the book she is reading are some of the most satisfying moments in October Light. "She began to fall in with the book's snappy rhythms, becoming herself more wry, more wearily disgusted with the world..."

As the spat between James and Sally becomes more grave and less of a rollick, Sally's trash novel becomes an hilarious rollercoaster ride. Sally hangs on for dear life. We learn through her musings a little more about the past and why the two siblings have only each other to rely on now. Much occurs to resolve the spat between James and Sally. And it's all perfectly satisfying, like true October light. If this book were a painting, I would imagine a Wyeth interior with a Bosch on the wall. Fasten your seatbelts and prepare to be entertained.

Rating:
Summary: Gardner's Most Accessible
Review: In his penultimate novel, John Gardner finds a mature, more confident voice; the baroque tour-de-force he unleashed in certain earlier novels is supplanted by a simple and straightforward narrative that exibits the estimable writerly trait of knowing what to leave out. The story concerns an elderly brother and sister "living together in profound conflict" (-dustjacket), an uneasy truce that escalates into full-scale war when curmudgeonly James L. Page takes a shotgun and blows Sally Page's TV back to the hell whence it came. This pulpy tripe casts a strange spell over her as fact and fantasy merge. The novel-within-a-novel grows, frankly, tiresome; what Gardner is getting at (ostensibly something about art's relationship to life, a trifle didactic if so), and how her cheap novel relates to the primary narrative, is obscure. It will, however, provide grist for English- and Philosophy-major mills. The main tale, meanwhile, is one of Gardner's most accessible -- funny, with expertly observed characters, and ultimately so moving it astonishes.

Rating:
Summary: Gardner's best book
Review: John Gardner was such an excellent writer that his artistry, like that of Hemingway, may go unnoticed by many readers. From the epic poem "Jason and Medea" and his translation of the Sumerian "Gilgamesh" to this novel and the later _Mickelson's Ghosts_, every line is eminently readable. In _October Light_ he moves far beyond his most popular work, the bildungsroman "_The Sunlight Dialogues_", to a novel of intense and intimite characterization. Fans of Gardner's student and disciple Richard Russo should be sure to read this book, which is unquestionably one of the greatest modern novels.