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 (and only apples to eat) , 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.
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"Dazzling . . . profound . . . superb . . . as rewarding as it is entertaining." - Los Angeles Times
"Rollicking, ribald, truly imaginative the way Dickens, for example, is imaginative and real." - The Washington Post"Is there another novelist who can do so many things so well? . . . His best novel to date." - Time"JOHN GARDNER CONTINUES HIS EXTRAORDINARY CAREER. I don't know how many people read his novels. Everyone should. Not because they're good for you (though they are) but because he is a superb writer . . . THE BEST NOVEL OF THE YEAR!" - The Boston Globe
FROM THE INSIDE FLAP
A story of an old man and an old woman--brother and sister--living together on a farm in Vermont. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Gardner (1933-1982) was born in Batavia, New York. His critically acclaimed books include the novels Grendel, The Sunlight Dialogues, and October Light, for which he received the National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as several works of nonfiction and criticism such as On Becoming a Novelist. He was also a professor of medieval literature and a pioneering creative writing teacher whose students included Raymond Carver and Charles Johnson.
