October Light

"Prospect Mountain, near Bennington College, is the setting for this richly allegoric novel which concerns four days, more or less, in the lives of two elderly Vermont eccentrics, brother and sister. Cardner tries his hand and succeeds at all manner of tricks here, including offering a book-within-the-book and mingling real people with fictional characters, and the result is a dramatic narrative that unfolds in perceptive counterpoint. The focus is sharp, the descriptions are vivid, and the thematic messages ring true without sentimentality, heroics, or trivialization. Written and illustrated with care, style, and intelligence, October Light is close to perfect." Reviewed by Lou Tanner, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)

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.