Aberration of Starlight

Name: Aberration of Starlight
Author: Gilbert Sorrentino
ISBN: 9780140058796

Gilbert Sorrentino

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Gilbert Sorrentino

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#2499 of 8,085 books · #1063 in Fiction

Shortlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction (1981).

Set at a boardinghouse in rural New Jersey in the summer of 1939, this novel revolves around four people who experience the comedies, torments and rare pleasures of family, romance and sex while on vacation from Brooklyn and the Depression. Billy Recco, an eager ten-year-old in search of a father. Marie Recco, nee McGrath, an attractive divorcee caught between her son and father, without a life of her own. John McGrath, dignified in manner yet brutally soured by life, insanely fearful of his daughter's restlessness. Tom Thebus, a rakish salesman who precipitates the conflict between Marie's hopes and her father's wrath. What emerges is a sure understanding of four people who are occasionally ridiculous, but whose integrity and good intentions are consistently, and tragically, frustrated. Combining humor and feeling, balancing the details and the rhythms of experience, Aberration of Starlight re-creates a time and a place as it captures the sadness and value of four lives.

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