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Books: Salter’s “Light Years”

A few years ago, my friend J.M. and I went to see Terrence Malik’s mesmerizing film “The Tree of Life.” It is long and dreamy and digressive — other movie goers bailed — but she and I hung in there and were mostly glad we did. All it needed, as J.M. pointed out, was some semblance of a plot.

That’s how I felt finishing James Salter’s “Light Years,” published in 1975. (I read his latest, “All that Is,” which is similarly lovely, and accretive.) “Light Years” is beautifully written, and held me in its grip, even though nothing much happens.

“Light Years” is the story of a marriage. Nedra and Viri Berland live with their young daughters in a suburban wonderland outside New York City, along the Hudson River. It is 1958. Dinner parties, ice skating, a pony, summers on East Coast beaches. They’re not unhappy but each is restless. Nedra keeps an enviable home but is sleeping with the neighbor. Viri is a successful — but not famous — architect whipsawed by his feelings for a young woman at his office.

The girls grow up; the Berlands age uneasily; a friend is beaten on the streets of lower Manhattan; another friend’s body hardens, causing a slow painful death.

The Berlands spend time in England. Nedra announces at the end of the trip that life will be different upon their return. It is: she leaves Viri and the girls and returns to Europe, and later, a bohemian existence in Manhattan. It’s understandable; there’s no shouting. Still, Nedra was the light at the center of that family; gone, Viri makes his way, uncertainly, through the rest of his life. Friends worry: the two were one. “You can live and be happy; he can’t.”

This is the story of the Berlands together, and apart. I didn’t want their story to end.

An American classic.

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