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Reunion Audiobook
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(2.96) - 284 listener ratings
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Publisher Description
The New York Times has called Alan Lightman “highly original and imaginative.” Each of his novels is a new exploration of that imagination, utterly unlike the others. Einstein’s Dreams, an international best-seller, was a whimsical and provocative tone poem about time. The Diagnosis, hailed by the Washington Post as a “major accomplishment” and a finalist for the National Book Award, was a disturbing examination of our obsession with speed, information, and money, and the resulting poverty of our spiritual lives. Lightman’s new novel, Reunion, is a delicate and haunting story of how we shape our identity through memory.
Charles is a middle-aged professor at a minor liberal-arts college, a once promising poet, admiring of passion but without passion himself. Without knowing why, he decides to attend his thirtieth college reunion. And there, he magically witnesses a replay of his senior year.
Drawn back into his memories, Charles watches his tender and romantic twenty-two-year-old self embark on an all-consuming love affair with a beautiful dancer. As the two young people struggle to find themselves amidst the social and political chaos of the late 1960s, the older Charles recalls contradictory versions of his past, ultimately confronting for the second time a series of devastating events that would forever change his life.
Written with crystalline prose, at once precise and mysterious, Reunion explores the pain of self-examination, the clay-like nature of memory, and the impossible hopefulness of youth.
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"This isn't my favorite of Lightman's but definitely worth a read if you like his style. "
— Joumana (4 out of 5 stars)
Quotes
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Elegant . . . spare, economical and charged with meaning .
— The New York Times Book Review -
One of a handful of writers in America capable of injecting the necessary quietude into his prose. . . . Reunion is that rare thing in this age: a genuine work of art.
— Denver Post -
A skillful exercise in the evocation of memory and loss. . . . Lightman’s delicate prose turns [Reunion] into a fascinating study.
— The Washington Post Book World -
Marvelously written. . . . A worthy addition to Lightman's work.
— Rocky Mountain News -
Lightman's prose leaps and twirls, circles his subjects and raises them up. If Degas or Manet had written prose it would read like this. . . . Reunion is that rare thing in this age: a genuine work of art.
— Denver Post -
A skillful exercise in the evocation of memory and loss. . . . Lightman’s delicate prose turns [Reunion] into a fascinating study.
— The Washington Post Book World“Reunion seeks . . . to plumb life's most complicated and enduring relationship: that between who one was and who one is. . . . Reunion most powerfully explores the seductions and betrayals of young love. -
Undeniably affecting. . . . Memorably lovely. . . . Lightman’s lyrical meditation on aging and nostalgia [will] hit home for just about any reader.
— San Francisco Chronicle -
Haunting. . . . He has a Proustian concern for manipulations of time and memory . . . [a] melancholy grasp of the sovereign ineluctability of time, that ‘hour of eternity.’ . . . Such a rueful consciousness is a pleasure to witness.
— Boston Globe -
A profoundly human story, rich in depth and nuance. . . . Lightman writes with a lightness, a lyrical understatedness that belies the underlying depths and complexities of the novel. . . . Reunion is the work of a great writer.
— The Globe and Mail (Toronto) -
Prose both luminous and precise. . . . The images of lightness and beauty and grace, of complexity and obsession that Lightman conjures through Charles’ vision of his lover make us participate in Charles’ yearning.
— The San Diego Union Tribune -
A subtle and haunting novel. . . . In Lightman's hands, the act of remembrance becomes a meditation on time, loss, and the ultimate selfishness of love. His writing gets under your skin precisely because of its measured and undemonstrative tone.
— Daily Mail (London) -
An achingly beautiful story about memory and the loss of passion. . . . Lightman succeeds in writing an inventive, unsentimental love story.
— The Newark Star-Ledger -
Uncommonly rich imagination . . . a masterful touch.
— Rocky Mountain News
Reunion Listener Reviews
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" Shitty and self indulgent. The worst kind of gross. "
— Elysabeth, 10/22/2013 -
" so so so so depressing, but really beautiful. "
— andeeeeee, 9/16/2013 -
" This isn't my favorite of Lightman's but definitely worth a read if you like his style. "
— Joumana, 3/26/2013 -
" Boring and depressing. "
— Erin, 12/10/2012 -
" Beautifully written. Difficult historical shifts but psychologically compelling. "
— Aaron, 10/14/2012 -
" Reading this as a potential selection for my book club. At first I enjoyed the main character, but his meandering thoughts finally drove me to put this book down. "
— John, 11/28/2011 -
" He's a good writer and I liked Einstein's Dreams very much. And I do like the way he talks about time. But this novel about first love was just too male. The women were shadowy, voiceless bodies. I'm just not particularly tolerant of that anymore. "
— Leigh, 10/26/2011 -
" Not one of Lightman's better novels, in my humble opinion. "
— brian, 9/10/2011 -
" Good to read right before a college reunion. Rather than encouraging sentimentality, it gives a realistic outcome to fantasies about the past. "
— Julz, 7/4/2011 -
" 15 books listed on Amazon with this title; neither the story or the writing held my attention. I didn't finish it. "
— Marian, 6/5/2011 -
" 15 books listed on Amazon with this title; neither the story or the writing held my attention. I didn't finish it. "
— Marian, 3/28/2011 -
" Reading this as a potential selection for my book club. At first I enjoyed the main character, but his meandering thoughts finally drove me to put this book down. "
— John, 1/15/2008 -
" so so so so depressing, but really beautiful. "
— andeeeeee, 11/1/2007 -
" Not one of Lightman's better novels, in my humble opinion. "
— Brian, 9/5/2007 -
" Shitty and self indulgent. The worst kind of gross. "
— Elysabeth, 6/22/2007 -
" Good to read right before a college reunion. Rather than encouraging sentimentality, it gives a realistic outcome to fantasies about the past. "
— Julz, 4/13/2007
About Alan Lightman
Alan Lightman is the author of several novels, including Einstein’s Dreams, a New York Times and international bestseller, and The Diagnosis, a finalist for the 2000 National Book Award. He is also the author of several collections of essays and numerous books on science. His work has appeared in the Atlantic, Granta, the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, and Nature, among many other publications. A theoretical physicist as well as a writer, he has served on the faculties of Harvard and MIT, where he was the first person to receive a dual faculty appointment in science and the humanities.
About Scott Brick
Scott Brick, an acclaimed voice artist, screenwriter, and actor, has performed on film, television, and radio. He attended UCLA and spent ten years in a traveling Shakespeare company. Passionate about the spoken word, he has narrated a wide variety of audiobooks. winning won more than fifty AudioFile Earphones Awards and several of the prestigious Audie Awards. He was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine and the Voice of Choice for 2016 by Booklist magazine.