Southern Light

by J.R. Salamanca

New Alfred A. Knopf,, 1986.. Near fine in near fine dust jacket.. First printing. The author's fifth novel (the first novel after a 13 year delay), a haunting love story, set on a small island in Chesapeake Bay. 675 pp.

Genres: Fiction

675 pages, Hardcover

First published February 12, 1986

About the author

J.R. (Jack Richard) Salamanca was a Maryland-based novelist born in St. Petersburg, Florida in 1922. Raised in Florida and Virginia, Salamanca served for three years in the U.S. Army Air Corps and is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, the Royal Academy of Music and the University of London. For many years, he served as a professor of English and creative writing at the University of Maryland. Salamanca’s books, which have been published since the 1950s, probe the human condition by portraying unconventional relationships. Salamanca is best known for his 1961 bestseller Lilith.

Salamanca is the author of the novels The Lost Country (1958) Lilith (1961), A sea change (1969), Embarkation (1973) Southern Light (1986) and That Summer’s Trance (2000). Adaptations: The Lost Country was filmed as Wild in the country, Twentieth century-fox, 1961; The movie Lilith was directed by Robert Rossen for Columbia in 1964.

Reviews

[Sunhawk · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have quite a lot to say about this book, but the Goodreads page for the book doesn't let me read others' reviews, so why bother?
There is one quote in this book that keeps popping into my consciousness: "But then Nils said something that seemed to ring out like a gunshot, and that the stability of every government in history has depended on the resignation of the poor. " [page 370] In the following paragraphs, our female protagonist processes this important thought in an insightful characterization of human companionship: "I stopped thinking in terms of seething proletariats and wicked monarchs (or hapless plutocrats and avenging mobs) and started thinking about him and me. If it was true of nations, it was probably true of people, and of every relationship between them, beginning with the primary, connubial one: that there was no such thing as genuine equity between them; that even the semblance of tranquility or equilibrium was based on the subjection of one and the domination of the other, whether there was consent to the condition or not."
This book, full of such brilliant flashes, would have been much improved, and had more readers, had it passed through the hands of an aggressive editor: parts are brilliant, and some of the over-long multi-page Proustian paragraphs couldn't hold my interest.
The story of two terminally self-involved people who miraculously discover a friendship that allows them to find a sort of confessional intimacy.

[Samuel Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant! One of the best American writers of all time!