Synopses & Reviews
"As nearly perfect as any American fiction I know," is how Reynolds Price (
The New York Times) described this classic that has been a favorite of readers, both here and in Europe, for almost forty years.
Set in provincial France in the 1960s, it is the intensely carnal story part shocking reality, part feverish dream of a love affair between a footloose Yale dropout and a young French girl. There is the seen and the unseen and pages that burn with a rare intensity.
Review
"Salter inhabits the same rarefied heights as Flannery O'Connor, Paul Bowles, Tennessee Williams, and John Cheever." The Washington Post Book World
Review
"A feverishly compressed, exquisitely controlled story." Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times
Review
"A tour de force of erotic realism, a romantic cliff-hanger; an opaline vision of Americans in France....A Sport and a Pastime succeeds as art must. It tells us about ourselves." The New York Times Book Review
Review
"Salter particularly rewards those for whom reading is an intense pleasure." Susan Sontag
Review
"The encounters of Dean and Anne-Marie seem not to require reading but sensing, as if the touch of the eye were almost too much for reality. And when at last the dream breaks, it is not with a shatter but a silent splintering of crystal fragments." Time
Synopsis
"As nearly perfect as any American fiction I know," is how Reynolds Price (
The New York Times) described this classic that has been a favorite of readers, both here and in Europe, for almost forty years. Set in provincial France in the 1960s, it is the intensely carnal story--part shocking reality, part feverish dream --of a love affair between a footloose Yale dropout and a young French girl. There is the seen and the unseen--and pages that burn with a rare intensity.
About the Author
James Salter was born in New Jersey in 1926 and is the author of
The Hunters,
The Arm of Flesh,
Solo Faces,
Light Years,
Dusk and Other Stories, and a memoir,
Burning the Days. He lives in Aspen, Colorado, and Long Island, New York.