The Speed of Light

by Elizabeth Rosner

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345442253
• ISBN13: 9780345442253
• Release Date: April 2003
• Publisher: Ballantine Group
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

a triumphant fusion of silence and voice, despair and hope

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 beau

INTELLIGENT AND POETICALLY BEAUTIFUL...

...the combination of which makes this an absolutely stunning debut novel. The author addresses some important issues in a sensitive and moving way -- buried pain and fear, the way that pain can be passed on from one generation to the next, and the ways in which people can deal with this pain and fear -- making the book entertaining, touching and uplifting.The story revolves around three characters -- an adult brother and sister, and their housekeeper. The siblings' father was a survivor of Auschwitz -- they remember that during their childhood there seemed to be a 'parade' of survivors that passed through their living room, sharing their grief and their stories. Their father, however, never shared his experiences with his family -- he carried them around inside him, in silence, for his entire life. This pain has been passed on to his children -- although neither of them have ever addressed it directly until the events in this book.Julian, the brother, is a brilliant science student -- he never completed his doctorate, but instead retreated into his own world, staying most of the time shut up in his apartment (upstairs from his sister), working on a commissioned dictionary of scientific terms. When he ventures outside, we can see his obsessive/compulsive behavior manifest itself more visibly: he takes the same route to the same errand on the same day of each week; he avoids cracks in the sidewalk; he steps on only one color of tile in the deli; he always orders the same foods. His sister Paula, who loves him dearly, recognizes that he is 'different' and tries to protect and care for him as much as she can.Paula is an aspiring opera singer -- with a true gift for music. When she leaves for an extended audition tour of Europe, she arranges for her housekeeper -- a woman named Sola, from an unnamed Central or South American country -- to stay in her apartments while she's gone to 'watch over' Julian, to prepare an occasional meal for him.Sola is dealing with her own hidden pain and grief -- she was the sole witness to the murder of her entire village by government troups who accused them of collaborating with rebels. She hid in the forest and heard the screams and pleas of the dying -- some were shot in the street, many were burned alive in their homes. She also mourns for her husband, who was killed in a mining accident, and for her infant daughter who died shortly thereafter.During her trip to Europe, Paula makes some discoveries in Budapest about her father -- and his family -- and his experiences (and role) in the death camp. What she learns shakes her to her very core. At the same time, at home, Sola has managed to begin a gentle but deep friendship with Julian, through the most effective method available to humans -- sharing honest, deep feelings. He awakens one night to hear her sobbing in the apartment below -- and he is drawn to her to share her pain and to comfort her.Sola shares her story with Julian -- and with another fr

A beautifully-crafted novel.

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.

The Next Generation

I do believe that Ms Rosner is the first to write about the children of the survivors of the halocaust and the effect it had on their lives. She has a unique way of probing the very depth of these two young people's souls to unveil the horror and the consequences of the silence of their father. A housekeeper, who is touched by a similar political tragedy comes into their lives and the miracle of rebirth begins. It was a book that was difficult to put down, beautifully written with passion, understanding and renewal. I congratulate this author for taking on a difficult and controversial task. I will be on the lookout for future books of which I hope there will be many!

an intricate tale of loss and redemption

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.