Light Years

By: James Salter

Published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1995-01-31

A brilliant portrait of a marriage from the PEN/Faulkner Award-winner and author of A Sport and a Pastime, with an introduction by Richard Ford.

“Light Years is a novel of almost holy radiance to me. It is great in every sense of the word: vast, and timeless, and enduring.”—Lauren Groff, bestselling author of Fates and Furies

“Remarkable. An unexpectedly moving ode to beautiful lives frayed by time.”—James Wolcott, Esquire

“[A] twentieth-century masterpiece. At once iridescent, lyrical, mystical and magnetic.”—Bloomsbury Review

Nedra and Viri's favored life revolves around delightful dinners, imaginative games with their children, enviable friends, and idyllic days spent skating on a frozen river or basking in the sun on the beach. But even as Salter lingers over the surface of their marriage, he lets us see the fine cracks that are spreading through it, flaws that will eventually mar the lovely picture beyond repair.

Seductive, witty, and elegantly nuanced, Light Years is a classic novel of an entire generation that discovered the limits of its own happiness—and then felt compelled to destroy it.