Customer Reviews

Aberration of Starlight

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At a boardinghouse in New Jersey in 1939, four people come together: a ten-year-old boy, his mother and grandfather, and a salesman on the make. As each relates his or her own version or their meeting in a series of superbly-constructed yet vibrant vignettes, the pathos & hilarity build to a climax that both delights & instructs, leading to laughter that hurts. Sorrentino has contrived an elegantly-patterned narrative that also manages to transcend its own schematic, creating 4 living souls whose shared dreams, defeats, memories & actions can enrich those of us who get to know them, seeing in their lives much of our own. In this way, Sorrentino works as a literary alchemist, forging living gold from the base metals of his masterly technique & insight. This is a book that deserves to sit on the same shelf as Faulkner, Hemingway, Woolf, and Joyce. It is a classic and will live long after its more popular brethren have been buried in the dustbins of literary history.

The same story told by the four main characters - and all four are unreliable! Po-mo to the fourth power, as we try to construct the truth through such disparate eyes.

I suppose each reader will come up with what we hope the future held for the four of them, but the only clue I have to what Sorrentino might have had in mind is the order in which he told their stories. But I'm probably wrong considering it's G. S. I wouldn't be surprised if he had no idea in mind at all.

This is a quick read with long lasting wonder.