The Lights of Earth [Hardcover]

Gina Berriault (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1984

San Francisco is the setting for Gina Berriaults fourth novel tracing the life of Ilona Lewis, a fiction writer who is abandoned by her lover, Martin Vandersen, at the moment he gains great fame as a novelist. Hoping to heal from this abandonment, she is stirred by the need to remember a man she left behind years ago: her older brother Albert, a difficult and troubled soul. Ilona realizes that her shame over him, which has lingered for years, has blighted her compassion and damaged her sense of wholeness. But while she struggles with these fateful memories, she experiences in her life what she had previously experienced only in her writing--the mingling of souls--and she begins to understand who the lights of earth really are.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Review

... [an] absorbing novel ... The writing is sensuous and the texture closely woven, in colors that, though muted, form a memorable design. -- The New York Times Book Review, Elizabeth Spencer --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 157 pages
• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux; 1st edition (April 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 086547141X
• ISBN-13: 978-0865471412
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,389,495 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book! Read it, you won't regret it., April 22, 1998

By 

Kerry Hubers ([e-mail]) (Virginia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Lights of Earth (Paperback)

This was a great book. Berriault is a superb writer. She draws her characters with incredible skill and pulls you into the not-so-happy life of her main character. Every line of this book is beautifully written. I haven't read any contemporary authors better at crafting a sentence than Ms. Berriault. On top of all this great writing is incredible insight into the nature of human existence. Worth reading for the writing, the story, or the philosophical insights, and you'll get to appreciate all three! Though the story is a bit depressing at times, it does provide some hope in the end, which, it seems from the reviews I've read, Women in Their Beds does not.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Deeply affecting, December 1, 1999

By 

Marnie Mueller (New York, New York USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Lights of Earth (Paperback)

This is a deeply affecting and exquisitely written book. I've gone from Women in the Beds to The Son to The Lights of Earth and feel priviledged to have spent reading time with such a talented writer. What troubles me is that I didn't know about her until she won the National Book Critics Circle Award and that I might never have known of her if Counterpoint Press and Northpoint Press before them hadn't had the courage to publish her.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Masterpiece by an under-recognized heroine in American Literature, May 15, 2009

By 

Bodhi Gaia (Santa Rosa, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Lights of Earth (Paperback)

A sense of impermanence, impending loss and abandonment are woven throughout this wonderful novella, an unsung masterpiece from an under-recognized luminary of American fiction writers. The unnerving insight of Berriault's characters is courageous, and one can relate to the sense of abiding loneliness they carry with them. They are not the popular, successful ones, at ease with themselves and life, but both blessed and cursed with the vision. They have seen far too deeply for glib cheerfulness.