Customer Reviews

The Physics of Sunset: A novel

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

"The Physics of Sunset" is a superbly written examination of an adulterous affair in Berkeley, California. Vandenburgh writes knowingly of the Golden State with a cranky, tender familiarity. She is equally deft at dissecting all the shifts and shimmerings that combine to make up a single human emotion. Her novel is constructed not chronologically, yet it's not circular either, perhaps angular. She takes seriously the book's underlying metaphor of physics--that the world is both chartable and predictable yet profoundly chaotic and unknowable--and this metaphor is woven into the lives of her two main characters, Alec, an architect married with two children, and Anna, a soon-to-be divorced poet with one child. The chapters alternate temporal perspectives and points of view, and there is in this structure a certain hopefulness, as if one could come to a weary situation with renewed freshness. (The ending illustrates this best.) At times Vandenburgh's characters seem to be masks or puppets standing in for disturbing archetypes of Man and Woman. Alec is forever "lumbering" or "striding" while Anna is "vanishing," "vague," "hesitating." "A woman acted inward," Vandenburgh writes, "taking whatever blows there were into the softness of her body, while a man might more easily go out and commit his hate upon the world." The book registers a kind of perpetual astonishment that men and women are different. How much more generously strong this fine novel would have been had it explored not fractious difference but the essential humanity of men and women, their common and fundamental fragility and worth. But the author keeps skin-close to her subjects, what she calls, distinguishing between the two, "the interior and the real world." (This brings to mind a stylistic quibble: it seems that on nearly every page Vandenburgh uses the word "actual" or "actually," as if to emphasize some distinction between the fictional and non-fictional aspects of our lives. I found this tic increasingly annoying.) This scrutiny yields some real gems. An early chapter entitled "Bodies At Rest," which juxtaposes to great effect Alec's heartbreak over a parent's death and the seismic breaking of a California earthquake, is one of the most moving pieces of writing I have read in a very long time. In the end, though, it is paradoxically a secondary character, Gina (Alec's wife), who turns out to be the most appealing and interesting person in the novel: someone who indeed has a reason to feel broken and yet forges on, believing passionately in her commitment to both Family and Art. I look forward to reading this author's next novel (please, though, no more ungainly words like "haptic," "cathected," or "eidetic"); this kind of writing offers rare vision into the deepest of our painfully human subtleties.

This novel is incredibly irritating. Pretentious and overwritten, it doesn't offer any insight into the human character, or even life in North Berkeley. Reading it, I felt like I knew Jane Vandenburgh well, and couldn't stand her. I bought the novel because I thought I would enjoy reading about Berkeley intellectuals, and because one reviewer mentioned incredibly graphic sex scenes. But the characters are filled with self-loathing, and it's easy to see why. The world of this woman's imagination is populated by weak-willed pseudo-intellectuals, and it turns your stomach to spend much time there. Unfortunately, for a novel like this to work, it usually helps to have a sense of humor - or at least a hint of irony (for example, I bet Martin Amis could have done a great job with this cast of characters.) This chick has neither. The plot revolves around a much-delayed adulterous affair between two ineffectual, over-educated, artsy-fartsy Berkeley types. Once these two finally screw, after years of eyeballing each other across dinner parties in the Berkeley hills, they are filled with fear. What a surprise. The sex scenes were, unfortunately, only a very small part of the novel, and didn't live up to the review I read, but at least they are not as dreadfully overwritten as the rest of the book. If Vandenburgh could write about the rest of life as directly as she writes about sex, she might be able to write a novel that wouldn't make you wince. --- Rhiannon Patterson

"The Physics of Sunset" received a wonderful review in the San Francisco Chronicle, presumably because the author hails from Berkeley (the setting for the novel). Having lived in the Bay Area I was excited to read this book; raves about the sex scenes provided added inticement. However, I found the main characters to be absolutely unlikable. Alec spends most of his time brooding; what does Anna see in him? Anna is equally devoid of redeeming qualities. She's flighty, neurotic,indecisive...she made me cringe. The much-touted sex scenes fail to deliver, primarily because Vandenburgh describes the graphic details but fails to connect with the characters' passions. The author tries too hard to be poetic and ends up sounding pretentious and melodramatic. Her overwrought prose elicits responses ranging from irritation to boredom to laughter. She does the women of Berkeley a disservice.

Ms. Vandenburgh has a remarkable gift. This piece of prose is daring, intricate and potent.

This book is exciting, fresh, and gorgeously written. The characters were intensely real and unique -- and it seems clear that the success and accuracy of these depictions is somehow annoying some people from certain areas. envy is so sad, isn't it? A wonderful book, which has hit a nerve, as good literature often does....

This is one of the best novels in years. It's everything I love in a book--wise, well written, engaging. you're going to love it.

Vandenburgh reminds us that love is the strongest of all human emotions. Often it is forbidden fruit and a love that is doomed from the onset. Her characters are real and true and I could feel their agony and their exhileration. A good author will do that. The sex scenes are steamy and the internal thoughts of the characters during sex is very convincing and understandable and exciting and sad. Not everyone will grasp the deep emotion that this novel evokes.

The Physics of Sunset by Jane Vandenburgh is a wonderful novel. I mean the sex alone makes the pages tremble. It is a really well written book, one everyone should own.

The chapter titles alone are worth the price of this book. I had the honor of reading with Jane Vandenburgh in NYC and she is a woman with an abiding talent as well as a passionate and strong sense of humor. As for the Physics of Sunset, it merits every bit of praise it has received in the media, and then some. I am about to track down everything this author has written so that I can sustain this feeling of having discovered a great new voice.

Another set of broken marriages and a cast of bored and boring characters having a mid life crisis in Berkeley. I lost interest with the slow place and predictability of the plot.