Milan Kundera
Young is the one that plunges in the future and never looks back.
Attribution
Nathaniel Hawthorne
No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.
Attribution
October 23, 2012
The following are lists of books releasing the weeks of October 22nd and October 29th that we think will be of interest to Bookreporter.com readers.
Editorial Content for Ancient LightBookContributorsReviewer (text)Harvey Freedenberg
ANCIENT LIGHT, the 18th novel from Man Booker Prize-winning Irish novelist John Banville (THE SEA), is the tragicomic story of a 15-year-old boy’s affair with a woman more than twice his age, told in the wistful, knowing voice of the man that boy has become half a century later. Read More Teaser
Is there any difference between memory and invention? This question haunts Alexander Cleave, whose stunted acting career is suddenly revived by a movie role portraying a man who may not be who he says he is. Cleave explores memories of his first love affair with his best friend's mother, as well as those of his daughter, lost to a kind of madness of mind and heart that he can only fail to understand. PromoIs there any difference between memory and invention? This question haunts Alexander Cleave, whose stunted acting career is suddenly revived by a movie role portraying a man who may not be who he says he is. Cleave explores memories of his first love affair with his best friend's mother, as well as those of his daughter, lost to a kind of madness of mind and heart that he can only fail to understand. About the BookThe Man Booker Prize-winning author of THE SEA gives us a brilliant, profoundly moving new novel about an actor in the twilight of his life and his career: a meditation on love and loss, and on the inscrutable immediacy of the past in our present lives. Is there any difference between memory and invention? That is the question that fuels this stunning novel, written with the depth of character, the clarifying lyricism, and the heart-wrenching humor that have marked all of John Banville's extraordinary works. And it is the question that haunts Alexander Cleave as he plumbs the memories of his first --- and perhaps only --- love (he, just fifteen, the woman more than twice his age, the mother of his best friend; the situation impossible, thrilling, devouring, and finally devastating)...and of his daughter, lost to a kind of madness of mind and heart that Cleave can only fail to understand. When his stunted acting career is suddenly, inexplicably revived with a movie role portraying a man who may not be who he says he is, his young leading lady --- famous and fragile --- unwittingly gives him the opportunity to see with aching clarity the "chasm that yawns between the doing of a thing and the recollection of what was done." ANCIENT LIGHT is a profoundly moving meditation on love and loss, on the inscrutable immediacy of the past in our present lives, on how invention shapes memory and memory shapes the man. It is a book of spellbinding power and pathos from one of the greatest masters of prose at work today. Copyright © 2025 The Book Report, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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