Customer Reviews

Light at Dusk: A Novel

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A place and time -- Paris, now -- are adroitly rendered in Peter Gadol's outstanding new work. Three Americans abroad find themselves facing moments of personal crises on a most inopportune day, as the City of Light faces an intense, dark struggle of its own. The political turmoil of the Parisian streets spills over into these characters' already messy lives; and finding a missing little boy becomes, for a day and night, the one important thing at which they must not fail.

Peter Gadol--the great hope of American fiction as far as I'm concerned--has done it again. If you became totally caught up in the sophisticatedly lovable characters and witty intrigue of Gadol's THE MYSTERY ROAST, or the darker yet equally compelling tones of his CLOSER TO THE SUN, you're in for an exquisite surprise with this, the wunderkind's latest. LIGHT AT DUSK is the kind of polished-perfect jewel you can devour in a single dusk-hour, and if you're in Paris, the novel's setting, while you do so, all the better. Thirtysomething Pedro is in Paris, reunited with old flame Will and ruminating on their troubled history, when he unexpectedly makes the acquaintance of Jorie, a haunted-seeming fellow American woman, and her young charge and "sort of" son, foreign-skinned Nico--who is then kidnapped by rightist nationalist thugs under their very noses! What follows are 24-some hours of nail-biting suspense, a Louvre's worth of political and erotic tension plus bedeviling moral ambiguity, and most of all a dark-eyed, tight-lipped little Lebanese boy who will utterly seize and break your heart. Whether or not you've ever known the moody romance of a foggy day in Paris-town, you'll fall swiftly and willingly under the spell of LIGHT AT DUSK. I think this is the book that will put Gadol over the top as our new neo-noir storyteller and postmodern fablist. Rest assured, you'll fall in love with Gadol's particular city of light...at dusk. Simply put, absolument parfait!

This brooding thriller is set in Paris played out by three Americans named Will, Pedro, and Jorie. Will abandons his Foreign Service post and returns to Paris to take up with an old lover named Pedro, who welcomes Will back after an absence of 7 years. The two then become involved with a diplomat's daughter, Jorie, who is mothering a Lebanese boy named Nico. When Nico is snatched away by a French Nationalist gang, the suspense begins. Finding the missing little boy becomes the main thrust of this story and from there on the story moves right along to its conclusion.

The story is interesting enough and keeps you turning the pages to the end, but I wish the relationship between Will and Pedro had been developed more fully, and with more detail. I would recommend this book, because Gadol's writing is very smooth and the words just seem to flow off the pages. The ending was unexpected and a real surprise. All in all a good read.

Gadol masterfully writes a very emotionally charged story of contemporary people in an extraordinary and wholly original conflict. This work almost defies classification, it's so unique and interesting.

You will become swept up in the different love stories...lost love, rekindled love, familial love, self love... All expertly interwoven into the eeire and unfamiliar landscape of a Paris we hardly, if at all, even know.

A compelling and thought provoking novel you will want to read in a single sitting.

This book was very much counter to my expectations; I picked it up as a "gay novel" but found it was about people -- some of whom happened to be gay -- caught in a story that was absorbing and very evocative of time and place. Unlike some readers who found the characters less than compelling, I felt the relationship between Will and Pedro was well delineated, and if we don't "know" Will, well, neither does Pedro. We make the discovery together. The book is much like a film noir, innocent people drawn into events they can't control by a chance encounter that changes their lives. It even evokes the black and white of film, describing a grey, wet, threatening city that is a far cry from the Paris of travel posters. A beautifully written little book.

Light at Dusk is not an epic tale of love or politics and it doesn't pretend to be. Rather, it's a pretty conventional but well-told and fast-paced exploration of a reunion between two former lovers which is overshadowed and ultimately marred by the darkening political circumstances of a France which has succumbed to the xenophobic, ultranationalistic and racist elements which have been nibbling at its mainstream over the last twenty years. Just after being reunited, Pedro and Will are once more separated when Will goes off to find the son of a former classmate, apparently kidnapped by the gangs who roam the streets of Paris, instilling fear. Not only does Gadol make the foreign service seem very appealing but his is a very rare take on gay relationships. He concentrates more on the relationship itself rather than the antecedents of the culture in which it is grounded, perhaps not the model form of gay writing but one which is refreshing and different. Light at Dusk- with its sad but redemptive ending- is an accomplished novel of the kinds of compromises, political, cultural, and most importantly, romantic, which are made in difficult circumstances. The novel is an swift read made easier by Gadol's engaging style. A quick, satisfying read.

This book felt off-center all the way through, perhaps because the author let his theme ("moral drift in an increasingly chaotic world") become more important than his characters. Pedro's relationship with his alleged longlost boyfriend Will is described in the sparest of terms, while other details like the weather, the architecture, and the politics of Paris are described at length. Because the characters go separate ways, many chapters contain only one of them and add to the feeling that the book is about two strangers who's lives barely intersect. Once the kidnapping occurs, the plot becomes a page-turner, providing drama in the form of the search and negotiations to get the boy back. Read this book for its characters' reserved and erudite descriptions of Parisian culture and the Foreign Service. Do not expect its characters to be compelling or complex.

Having read The Long Rain, a truly thought provoking book, I eagerly anticipated the release of Gadol's newest book. Unfortunately, it fell far short of my expectations and of the author's capabilities.

The main characters, Pedro, Will and Jorie fail to evoke much sympathy for their self-inflicted dilemas and spend the better part of the book indulging in bemoaning their current situations.

The story is set in Paris and told through the eyes of Pedro, Will's lover. Will, a former foreign service employee seeks to find redemption for two deaths in Mexico that he feels responsible for. To do so, Will uses his foreign service contacts to track down Nico, the child that Jorie has raised as her own, who has been kidnapped by a band of nationalist thugs. As Will works to rescue Nico, Pedro and Jorie must make decisions regarding their own futures when and if Will returns with Nico.

Ultimately, the right decisions are made by Pedro and Jorie, but the reader is left wondering why it took them so long to do the right thing.