Customer Reviews

Reunion

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"Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back? Is anything so pure? Or is love, by its nature, a reciprocity, like oceans and clouds, an evaporating of seawater and a replenishing by rain?" - from "Reunion," by Alan Lightman

Every few years, I get a little gift: a new novel from Alan Lightman. He doesn't publish fiction often, but when he does it is invariably worth reading. Best of all, each book is different from the others, while all are good.

Lightman's style is one of elegant language and a unique perspective. In each of his books, I find enjoyment simply in the words he uses, and how they flow together to form his narrative. In this, "Reunion" is no different -- Lightman's use of language is beautiful in and of itself.

In terms of the story itself, "Reunion" is about a man in his fifties who attends his 30th college graduation class reunion. In his own words, he lives a "comfortable" life -- he's divorced, with one child, and basically unremarkable, but "comfortable" nonetheless. At his reunion, he sees some people he remembers from college and meets a few new people. However, the real "reunion" of the story is when the main character (Charles) confronts his memories of the intense love affair he shared with a ballet dancer in his last year of school.

To be honest, this is a story that most of us have read before. It is Lightman's perspective on the story, and his keen sense of observation, which elevate "Reunion" above the trite and pithy messages of other, similar, stories. Lightman offers ideas and viewpoints which are rare in modern fiction -- perhaps even unique to this novel. As such, "Reunion" is a rare and valuable book.

Particularly memorable about "Reunion" is the way Lightman conveys Charles experiencing his memories. In several instances, he sees and hears what happened in different ways -- the idealized version that is what he thought would happen at the time, and the more human version which is probably closer to what really happened. The reader is left to question whether either "version" of Charles' memories is what really happened, or if true events were some unknown mixture of both versions. The subjectivity of memory is one of the major topics of the novel.

"Reunion" is a story about love, to be sure... and a touchingly bittersweet one at that. However, it is also about the changes and compromises that come with age, about the natural fallacy that personal perspective brings to events, and about the fragility of our memories. While it may not be my favorite of Lightman's books (that label still belongs to "Einstein's Dreams"), it is ceratinly an example of why I always look forward to a new Alan Lightman novel.

I've read all of Lightman's previous novels but, except for Einstein's Dreams, I haven't been too impressed. I was tempted to skip this one. I'm glad I didn't.

Reunion is the story of a college professor/poet named Charles who goes back to his thirtieth college reunion. While there, he experiences a vivid flashback to his senior year in college when he was in love with a ballerina named Juliana. Through the flashback we get to experience this brief, fiery affair from beginning to end. It is a wonderful experience.

It is not a wonderful experience in the way one might expect, however. Really, it is a rather ordinary love affair of a 22-year-old complete with the intense range of emotions from passion and doubt to jealously and joy. And it is in its ordinariness that this novel is so special. Because, excepting the end where a few surprises muddle the works, its ordinariness allows Lightman an extraordinary truthfulness.

Charles is perhaps a more real character than any I've read. I felt I understood this man--his reactions to his current lover, his former classmates, his memories. I felt that he was having the same kind of emotional experiences that I have had. And though Charles' story is his own, his emotions are universal. This is a very difficult effect to produce and Lightman does it brilliantly here.

Of course, this is a brief novel but, in this case, perhaps that is best. The quick read helps convey the intensity of the experience, particularly the flashbacks. And though the protagonist is a man, I think the universality of the emotions will speak to any reader. I highly recommend this book.

Is it possible for a person to love without wanting love back? Is anything so pure? Or is love, by its nature, a reciprocity, like oceans and clouds, an evaporating of seawater and a replenishing by rain? ~Alan Lightman

Einstein's Dreams is a delicate taste of the banquet of intimacy in Reunion. I am never sure if Alan Lightman's books are novels or the deepest expressions of his romantic nature. After reading Einstein's Dreams I knew there was more to discover and here it is in all its intimate beauty.

The first few pages left me in a high state of amusement. How I understand that love of words as he wishes to be reading a book while lost in the world of a woman. Yet, what would the world be without romantic seduction and the seduction of words? In Reunion, the two dance together, intertwined in poetry and longing.

Detailed accounts of action and reaction fill the pages as Alan Lightman's mind breathes every nuance of life, every consideration. Amidst the contemplations, humor mingles with memories and astute observations. I kept thinking: "I feel all my life past was a beautiful prison from which I unwillingly escaped."

Alan Lightman revels in the sense of adventure he creates through imaginative descriptions of all that occurred or could have occurred. Are memories how we imagine life could have been or how life actually occurred?

Does it matter? Alan's recollections are worth reading twice. He creates ambience and nostalgia in one sentence. Nostalgia for rain drenched sidewalks I have never walked on and musty libraries I wish to visit or return to hours later in memory. His powers of observation flow into a complete unveiling of appearances and private passions.

Reunion is an escape into a world of imaginative observation. Even Alan Lightman's recollections of college and college roommates become an introduction to his main character's inclinations. We follow hearts through secret pains and pleasures. As Charles, a middle-aged professor, decides to attend his thirtieth college reunion, he remembers his senior year. He wanders with his twenty-two-year-old self in 1960 and the entire book become a journey to a past he so desperately wants to relive in memory.

I am so in love with the writing in this book, I hardly mind that a person named Charles wanders in the pages and is in love with a beautiful dancer. I want to know more about how Alan Lightman views the world. His characters seem to me a backdrop for his heart's revelations. This is an obsession with love and life itself and I love the way the writing style changes and keeps your full attention. At times you are reading a novel, at times a memory and at times you have become so seduced by sentence structure, you are lost in a world of words and you are in love.

~The Rebecca Review

A wonderful book from Lightman -- it's literature at its best! Alan writes with such grace, and lightness. Chapter transitions and character development are great, and the story moves with ease and fluidity.

His style here is quite unique from his other novels. This is absoulutely his finest work.

Highly recommended!

The Reunion might be thought of as an elaboration of the climactic chapter of Good Benito, in which the irrationality of human existence is manifested as a woman obsessed with artistic expression, and with whom the hero is in turn obsessed, with tragic results.

The choice of narrating most of the book as nostalgic revery from decades into the future risks making the hero's loss pathetic. Yet it also adds the half-expectation of a true reunion that never arrives, besides also allowing the contrast of the foolhardy passion of a youthful Charles, as a budding poet as helplessly compelled to pursue Juliana as she is compelled to dance, with the staid boredom of the middle-aged Charles, the tenured literature professor with anything but passion for his perfectly stable and "not unattractive" romantic partner.

His unenviable end state is reflected in a dreadful former classmate, who has built a tremendously successful shoe business, but only by transforming himself from fully human to a mere shoe salesman. The unflattering suggestion is that Charles has strayed so far from the inspiration that led him into his career, his selling of poetry and literature classes has become nothing more than an equivalent of selling shoes. Something inside him recoiled from the harsh results of living life with the passion of poetry, but that withdrawal turned his capacity for feeling into a husk.

Indeed, the complement to Good Benito might be extended. Whereas that earlier book explored the failures of life as a physics professor, Lightman's earlier profession, Reunion explores the failures of life as a literature professor, Lightman's current position, including a scathing portrayal of petty careerism involving Charles's antiheroic literary mentor and another protege. Perhaps, like Stephen King, Lightman feels driven to cast his fears into fables as a means of exorcising them.

Like all Lightman, the style is somehow both subtle and operatic. He poses this specter: that which makes us human has little if anything to do with what makes life easier or more socially acceptable. Yet the hero is as apparently helpless to choosing a course among fates here as in The Diagnosis.

What is left is the inevitability of loss. And Charles's loss, though stale with the passage of thirty years, is as poignant and palpable as his brief relationship with Juliana was torrentially glorious. There is the ring of truth in this exploration of yearning, joy, and regret.

Lightman is a much better writer than I might have imagined from his science background! He writes a sad story that most of us can relate to in someway or another. The story is not highly original at the end (the climax I mean), but still a sharp tale about lost loves. Sad but well worth the read.

Not only does Charles attend his Reunion, he reunites with his younger self and essentially relives his youthful love affair. This is a wonderfully crafted small novel, deftly using point of view shifts (first person for the older Charles, third for the younger) to show the distance between the two, finally bringing the men together in the end as they reflect on the fate of the lovers.

When I first read Alan Lightman's "Reunion," I thought it was above-average. I believed it to be very good, but not on-par with many other contemporary novels. Now, having finished re-reading it last night, it's one of my top favorites in the contemporary genre. "Reunion" is a haunting story that makes you see the realities of lost love and lost youth. Charles is a college professor who goes to his thirtieth college reunion quite nonchalantly. There, he is reminded of his college years during the Vietnam era. He distinctly remembers his affectionate relationship with a ballerina named Juliana, which ultimately brings him to his worst dilemma yet. I won't spoil anything, but I will tell you that this is a very powerful story. It deals with love, lust, youth, and human nature in general. The scenes involving Professor Galloway, rabbit-hunting, and the Vietnam draft are there to remind us of our darker side. But most effective is the main plot as young Charles and Juliana constantly battle away from youth and towards adulthood, and these strategies soon affect their relationship.

There are only a couple of flaws that I can find in "Reunion." First, the novel does start off very slowly. There are several times in which the main plot is veered away by use of fillers (most of which I found uninteresting). The other flaw is very minor: on Page 218, there is a brief narrative on the life of an ant. It comes out of nowhere, and it reads more like a silly passage rather than a relevant part of the plot. Fortunately, those are my only complaints, and "Reunion" remains a very underrated piece of contemporary fiction. It has an emotionally evocative story, sympathetic characters, and some straightforward but nonetheless poetic prose. It may be a very short novel, but the story itself is really worth looking into.

Grade: A-

In Reunion, a middle-aged professor named Charles, with a successful job and faithful, caring lover, goes to his thirtieth reunion, muses in his room over a lost love, Juliana, his ballet dancer girlfriend who cheated with him with a professor. He caught them, blackmailed the professor into calling it off, then found out she was pregnant, and forced her to not have the abortion she wanted. The girlfriend fled and he never saw her again. The book ends with the professor's younger self whining to him, and the professor returning to his newest lover and crying on her shoulder....One need go no further than the first three paragraphs of Lightman's book to see that, regardless of the tale, the writing is simply flaccid, trite and dull:


Sheila lies on top of me, snoring, her heavy [...] heavy on my chest, her stomach on my stomach, her hair damp in the afternoon heat, a shard of light through the white shutters she closes when we make love, the slow beat of the overhead fan, the tiny sound of a radio from the street. I too am falling asleep.
I fly above mountains, dizzy, frightened. Someone's arm slides across my face. What? What? An hour has passed, maybe two. I sit up on the silk rug, sweaty. In slow motion, Sheila kisses the back of my neck, stands, and stretches.

`I like it here, with the books,' she says and yawns. `I always have. Have you read them all? I'll bet most of them are for show.' Grinning at me, she takes a long sip from the wineglass on the bookshelf. I watch the amber liquid swirl slowly around her lips, I stare at her body, creamy and white. She is not unattractive in her middle-aged nakedness, and I think that I may even love her, but I am ready for her to leave. There is a certain book I want to finish.


It's not this book, trust me.

Beautiful, short, written with great clarity and directness. A story about love. youth, aging and the effects of life and passion on who we become.

Lightman is a theoretical physicist who has taught on faculties of physics and humanities. He is a best-selling,award winning, author of novels and essays. Reunion gives, mercifully,
no inkling of his technical background; instead its setting is ballet and poetry, love and time, and it reads like the work of a classicist, one with a rare appreciation for directness. The language Lightman uses is beautiful, yet unobtrusive. Though his treatment of time is fluid and modern, he eschews the modern penchant for making his words themselves principal actors.

Reunion is shortish, and compelling. The reader is drawn into the world and emotions of the narrator and finds himself flowing along the narrative until, with something like the speed at which a life observed will have passed, the story's done.

In response to criticisms of mawkishness and triteness of the tale from some other reviewers, I can only say that the most compelling and important situations are ones which recur in everyone's life and are common. Telling the stories in such a way as to touch the reader is the gift.