The Speed of Light (Ballantine Reader's Circle) [Paperback]

Elizabeth Rosner (Author)

Book Description

Series: Ballantine Reader's Circle | Publication Date: April 1, 2003

Every family has a story. Every story, eventually, must be told.

For most of their lives, Julian Perel and his sister, Paula, lived in a house cast in silence, witnesses to a father struggling with a devastating secret too painful to share. Though their father took his demons to the grave, his past refuses to rest.

As adults, brother and sister struggle to find their voices. A scientist governed by numbers and logic, Julian now lives an ordered life of routine and seclusion. My father gave up his language and his homeland. But he carried his sadness with him, under his skin. It was mine now. In contrast, Paula has entered the world as eagerly as Julian retracts from it. An aspiring opera singer, she is always moving, buoyant with sound. Singing was the only gift I could offer to my father. I filled the house with music. I tried to give him joy. . . .

Yet both their lives begin to change on a Wednesday, miercoles, the day that sounds like miracles. Before embarking on a European opera tour, Paula asks her housekeeper, Sola, to stay at her place--and to look after Julian in the apartment above. Yet Sola, too, has a story. I want to clean myself like the window of a house, make myself clear for things to pass through. Flat and quiet.

As Paula uncovers pieces of her father's early life in Budapest and the horrifying truth of his past, Julian bears witness to Sola's story--revelations that help all three learn how to both surrender and revere the shadows that have followed them for so long.

The Speed of Light is a powerful debut about three unforgettable souls who overcome the tragedies of the past to reconnect with one another and the world around them. In an extraordinary accomplishment, Elizabeth Rosner has created a novel of love and redemption that proves the pain of the untold story is far greater than even the most difficult truth.


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The adult children of a holocaust survivor learn about grief, forgiveness and the power of bearing witness from a Latina housekeeper who has also been victimized by government-sponsored genocide in a dark, subtle novel by poet Rosner. Julian and Paula Perel grew up with a somber, uncommunicative father still shell-shocked by his years in Auschwitz. Now with both parents dead, the siblings share a house in Berkeley, Calif. Julian, a recluse, lives an obsessive routine with 11 TVs in various states of disrepair to fend off the sadness that he calls his father's legacy. When Paula, an opera singer as adventurous as her brother is shy, heads to Europe to audition for opera houses and become a star, she asks her housekeeper, Sola Ordinaio, to care for her apartment and to keep an eye on Julian, whose elaborate rituals govern his life. A wary friendship blossoms between Sola and Julian, and deepens when Sola confesses that she is the only surviving witness of the Mexican government's massacre of her small village. Meanwhile, in Budapest, Paula traces the Perel family's roots and finds someone who tells her a horrible secret about Jacob Perel's time in Auschwitz. Paula feels her confidence faltering and cancels her last auditions to return to Berkeley. There, she finds Julian, with Sola's help, emerging from the emotional paralysis of his life and decides that she will not allow the tragedies of the past to silence him. The emotional impact of Rosner's material is considerable, but her schematic method of alternating the three voices of her protagonists makes the symmetries between their stories a little too neat. Still, the catharsis is moving, and the final affirmation of life, love and art to erase tragedy is uplifting. Agent, Joelle Delbourgo. 8-city author tour. (Sept.)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist

Trapped by memories, bound by conscience, three characters burdened by their separate fears and individual longings intricately merge in Rosner's haunting tale of timeless secrets and timely salvation. Siblings Julian and Paula Perel are the children of a Holocaust survivor; Paula's housekeeper, Sola, is the lone survivor of a holocaust that obliterates her native village. For each, the past is as palpable as the present, crowded with images of tragedies they've witnessed and suffering they've endured. Beset by their responsibility to revere the dead, their lives are defined by survivor's guilt, and the stories they suppress are the stories they become compelled to share. As their narrations are interwoven, their roles are interchanged: the strong become weak; the weak grow strong; and the frightened become fearless. When each one speaks of unspeakable horrors, they discover the power of silence and the fragility of sound; and when they no longer despair of the survival that bestowed freedom, they find the freedom to survive. With a sumptuous voice resonating with wisdom, Rosner's lyrical debut novel is a spellbinding tribute to the revelations that redeem us and the emotions that ennoble us. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; First Paperback Edition, First Printing edition (April 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345442253
• ISBN-13: 978-0345442253
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.6 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #356,406 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a triumphant fusion of silence and voice, despair and hope, June 29, 2002

By 

Bruce J. Wasser (Lake Bluff, IL) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Speed of Light (Hardcover)

Elizabeth Rosner has written an extraordinary debut novel in "The Speed of Light," an elegant, understated work which tackles such serious themes as the Holocaust's impact on the children of survivors, political massacre in Latin America and the significance of personal connection as a means of liberating the human possibiliites of hope, memory and love. "Speed" is that kind of lovely, slow-paced psychological novel where three decent people, scarred deeply by the anguish of either directly or derivately witnessing horrific suffering, learn that shared memory, tenderness and the need to risk everything for love assist them in overcoming the pain of a murderous past. This brilliant work ultimately is about possibilities: of living in a world drenched with blood, of overcoming enormous personal fears, of embracing one another's past to insure the chance of mutual survival.

Each of the three central characters has a unique voice (so much so that this latticed work includes three different type settings) and presents his or her own complicated confrontation with silence and memory. Each character gropes for meaning; each confronts the terror of the past, the anguish of living a solitary life and the desperate fear of abandonment, great sadness and existential isolation. Each character learns the nobility of bearing witness.

Julian Perel has absorbed the silence and imagined Holocaust memory of his father, Jacob. Living upstairs from his musically-gifted sister, Julian is an obsessive recluse, immersed in a life of suffocating detail, terrified of human touch, suspicious of language and voice. He theorizes that his father "gave up his language because it belonged to the killers; he could not live with the sounds of their voices inside his own." Like his now deceased father, Julian speaks in "the vocabulary of science and never reveal[s] his heart." Tormented by a past which he does not fully comprehend but which dominates his personality, Julian's self-imposed isolation is at once a private punishment and a social rebuke. It is only through his halting relationship with Sola, a hired housekeeper, that he begins the process of personal integration.

Hired by Paula Perel to oversee her downstairs apartment while pereforming in Europe's opera houses, Sola expands her domestic obligations as she initiates a friendship, a relationship, with the reluctant Julian. Sola, ravaged by memories of her village's annihilation at the hands of a brutal Latin American despotism, has her own torment, unshared and terribly burdensome. Slowly, quietly, Sola and Julian begin to learn a central lesson: sharing memories and making others become derivative witnesses to social evil is a good thing. By permitting this "buried language" to surface, Sola initiates a process by which both Julian and she perceive the possibilities of life.

The most tragic figure in "Speed" is Paula Perel, whose operatic voice soars through her apartment and vibrates with immediate beauty. Seemingly oblivious to post-Holocaust trauma, Paula sets out to Europe to test the quality of her voice. There she discovers the hidden story of her family's past with shattering consequences. Where Julian has had a lifetime to absorb memory and silence, Paula has but days. She learns that inflicted silence "bruises the heart," that her father's heart must have been "completely black and blue from a lifetime of sorless grief banging around in his chest." How Paula confronts both her own personal crisis and the implications of the Holocaust on her professional life is one of the many instructive moments of the novel.

"The Speed of Light" is nothing less than brilliant. Invoking the Hasidic teaching that "there are three ways to mourn: through tears, through silence, and by turning sorrow into song," Elizabeth Rosner has crafted a moving novel about love and meaning and connection in the midst of remembered pain and sorrow. Through her sensitive portrayal of three fully-imagined protagonists, Rosner teaches us that people can emerge from the wilderness of despair to the refreshing oasis of possibility, voice and connection.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A beautifully-crafted novel., November 30, 2001

By 

"dynamism" (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Speed of Light (Hardcover)

Rather than write a synopsis of the book, or suggest who may or may not enjoy it, I simply want to say that The Speed of Light is one of the most wonderfully poignant, emotional, thoughtful books I have ever read about love, loss and human relationships. The writing is so lovely and so poetic, that irrespective of your inclination toward prose or poetry, you cannot help but be moved by the language of the book. Also, the manner in which the writer presents the points of view of the three main characters is so perfectly executed that she makes a difficult style choice appear simple. Liz Rosner is a gifted writer. This book should be on everyone's shelf. I have bought it as a gift for many friends and cannot recommend it any more heartily. Read it read it read it.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an intricate tale of loss and redemption, August 29, 2001

By 

I Hate Amazon "contributor" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Speed of Light (Hardcover)

Elizabeth Rosner's debut novel is nothing short of a marvel, with language so rich it seems impossible to sustain. And yet sustain it she does, with no less than THREE separate voices that weave around one another in a kind of triple counterpoint. While that may sound like it would be difficult to follow it is actually very reader-friendly, particularly with the aid of different fonts to indicate the narrative speaker.
Julian, a socially maladaptive genius, keeps the world at bay through inflexible routine and the constant company of his thirteen televisions. He lives with his sister, Paula, a rising opera diva who by contrast throws herself into the world to drown herself in experience. When she embarks on a European tour, she leaves Julian and their apartment in the care of Sola, her housekeeper, a recent immigrant from an unnamed South American country. Each character carries with them an onus of grief and remembrance which they struggle to cope with in their own way. As their stories unfold and their relationships develop, each comes to terms with the nature of their own burden, and they must decide whether to risk the sanctity of their pain by sharing it with one another.
The novel is meticulously crafted and gently paced, lyrical without crossing the line into preciousness. Ms. Rosner is clearly a writer with a love and mastery for the music of words, and here she puts her gifts to use in delineating a quiet tale of the aftermaths of tragedies, where the survivors are compelled towards the comfort of revelation. This is a beautifully realized work that heralds the arrival of a major talent on the literary scene.