There seem to be more books being published or reissued. There is no way anyone can keep up, unless you win the lottery or get money from a rich author, quit your job, and hire a couple of lit professors to guide you through the maze!

I’ve given up on keeping up with the latest and greatest and reissues. I concentrate only on what I can do.

Keep up your great job in reviews.

And you probably made the right decision of The Winter Vault, given your tastes. I found it extremely tough sledding because of the writing style — actually, had to go back to the start after 120 pages with a new attitude. It has, however, become one of those books where the better parts keep coming back to mind and the lesser parts seem to be fading in memory. I may give it another go when it appears.

Michaels is a poet and when poets turn to fiction their language is often a little too much for me.

You can add another to the number of people you know who felt it was overwritten, Kevin! So much so, that when the publisher tried to interest me in an early copy of The Winter Vault, I declined. However I will watch it with interest and may try it yet; my tastes have changed in the time since I read Fugitive Pieces – though it has to be said, generally away from ‘fine writing’ – so who knows?

Speaking of fine writing, I do agree with your take on the shortcomings of Light Years, Kevin, and can only say that they weren’t shortcomings for me. The aesthetic pleasure I got from Salter’s exquisite prose was more than enough to offset any lack of interest or sympathy with the characters or feeling of implausibility at their success or otherwise.

I quite liked Fugitive Pieces and that is probably a tribute to the book. Michaels is a poet and when poets turn to fiction their language is often a little too much for me. That wasn’t the case for me with this book (although I know a number of people who felt it was overwritten) and I found the two stories that form the novel to be very well told, with well-developed characters. The Winter Vault shares that with it in that Michaels locates her two central characters in two quite different stories. My guess is that you would quite like Fugitive Pieces.

Also, thanks for the suggestions at the end of this comment. I am very intrigued by Fugitive Pieces, and must keep that one in my mind when I look at my reading schedule for the next few months.

I think the theme of the book gets captured in the paragraph that ends the chapter on Page 224. It concludes “…he had not wanted enough. He saw that clearly. When all was said, he had wanted one thing, it was far too small: he had wanted them to grow up in the happiest of homes.”

For me, that pretty much captures what this book was about and I don’t think that is enough.

Like you, I engaged with Viri and Nedra as characters only sporadically, even though I wanted much more. For example, we know Viri’s mediocrity as an architect effects both his self image and his relationship. Yet all available evidence suggests that, at least financially, he is quite successful. At 30, he has a house on the Hudson within a driving commute of the City. He has clients who come to dinner. His wife shops at a selection of boutiques in the city. When they divorce, she can afford to set up shop in Davos — boring it may be, cheap it is not. Okay, he isn’t I.M. Pei or Frank Lloyd Wright, but if this isn’t success, what is? So just where does the mediocrity that is so important lie? Preoccupation with family? Lack of commitment? Salter doesn’t even tells us what Viri does design (homes? office buildings? churches? schools? warehouses?). One has to believe the omission is deliberate — the reason for it is opaque.

Nedra is even more empty. She looks after her daughters, gives and goes to dinners and has affairs. She is trapped in her marriage — yet we are given no indication that her life would have been any less desolate without it, since there doesn’t seem to be anything else to her. Again, I guess this must be the point — that young women of the 50s had no other choice. I think other novelists have shown that in a much more interesting way. (Jane Austen, George Eliot and Edith Wharton actually made careers of it in far better books.)

By the middle of the book, I was dreading the arrival of the next dinner party, and they did keep arriving, with its totally implausible conversations. Everytime Salter wants to say something, a dinner party is written into the plot and words inserted into character’s mouths. For me, a classic example of telling, not showing.

You found the impressionistic writing overcame problems like this. If I can extend the artistic metaphor, I found it more pointilistic than impressionistic — incredibly fine detail, as opposed to a blur. There is no doubt Salter captures scenes in very fine detail, often to excess (consider all the descriptions of drinks and wine that proceed those damn dinner parties). The problem for me was that when you take a step back to see what the overall picture is about, it is humdrum and uninteresting.

When I am so out of tune in my impression with readers I respect (like you and John) and a lot of the professional critics, I feel I should at least try to figure out why. I have two explanations with this book.

One is that I am too old for it. I’ve lived through my 30s and 40s and they were pretty good decades. The uncertainty and indecision that are central to Viri’s character simply don’t land with me — were I in my 30s, intuitively they might well be there.

More important, I suspect, is that I am not a parent. If “the happiest of homes” was his only desire (which would make bringing up his daughters his major motivation, despite the empty marriage), I again miss out on the intuitive understanding that others might have. Then again, perhaps the author could try to enrol me in that understanding.

Sorry to be so grumpy about a book you like. By way of trying to offset that, I will offer an early tout on another example of impressionistic writing that I think has some similarities (and which I found more interesting, even if I also found it somewhat wanting). Anne Michaels’ new novel, The Winter Vault, is due for release in April — I’ve read a proof copy and was reasonably impressed (the publisher’s summary on Amazon.com is an accurate description of the story). Her first novel, Fugitive Pieces, won the 1997 Orange Prize. This one, like the Salter, also explores the withering of a relationship (in very impressionistic language) but, for me, does it against a much more engaging context — the building of the Aswan Dam and the St. Lawrence seaway, destruction in wartime Warsaw. Keep an eye out for it.

It’s the part where the snow has blocked all of the roads, and Nedra wants to go home. She says she’ll drive herself but the host won’t let her, says she would never make it so he’ll drive her home. He runs into the post at the end of the driveway and says, “See, you’d have never made it.”

And I look forward to your thoughts on the book, Kevin and Max. I’m particularly interested to see if it is better this time through, Kevin. I have to admit, a lot of my appreciation with the book came at sporadic moments and then with the overall feel of the book, and not with a sense of enjoyment each time I opened it.

I second John’s recommendation of The Hunters, I thought I’d written it up on my blog also but it seems I must have read it shortly before starting the blog. Anyway, it’s also excellent and I fully agree with John’s review of it.

Salter is I think an underrated writer, your review flags why and I thought it a great piece and one that really excited me about Light Years.

We’re all ignorant by the way, if I’ve found anything it’s that the more I read the more conscious I am of how little I’ve read and how much there is I haven’t.