Aberration of Starlight

by Gilbert Sorrentino

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1564784398
• ISBN13: 9781564784391
• Release Date: July 1993
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Length: 211 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.7" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Four Part Dis-Harmony

The same story told by the four main characters - and all four are unreliable! Po-mo to the fourth power, as we try to construct the truth through such disparate eyes. I suppose each reader will come up with what we hope the future held for the four of them, but the only clue I have to what Sorrentino might have had in mind is the order in which he told their stories. But I'm probably wrong considering it's G. S. I wouldn't be surprised if he had no idea in mind at all. This is a quick read with long lasting wonder.

4 people + 1 night = a brilliant, funny, heartrending novel.

At a boardinghouse in New Jersey in 1939, four people come together: a ten-year-old boy, his mother and grandfather, and a salesman on the make. As each relates his or her own version or their meeting in a series of superbly-constructed yet vibrant vignettes, the pathos & hilarity build to a climax that both delights & instructs, leading to laughter that hurts. Sorrentino has contrived an elegantly-patterned narrative that also manages to transcend its own schematic, creating 4 living souls whose shared dreams, defeats, memories & actions can enrich those of us who get to know them, seeing in their lives much of our own. In this way, Sorrentino works as a literary alchemist, forging living gold from the base metals of his masterly technique & insight. This is a book that deserves to sit on the same shelf as Faulkner, Hemingway, Woolf, and Joyce. It is a classic and will live long after its more popular brethren have been buried in the dustbins of literary history.