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The Lights
"I was taken most seriously when listening to men listen to themselves.”
When Leda Galvan, a gifted writer who can also occasionally be given to self-destruction, gets in to the school of her dreams and sets out to make a new life in Austin, she soon discovers that the heaviest baggage cannot always be left behind.
Funny, smart, and self-aware, The Lights is also a philosophical inquiry into the nature of how we connect in our most intimate bonds, sure to please fans of both Emma Straub and Eric Rohmer. As Leda and the men in her orbit grapple with sex, betrayal, honesty, and each other, their own closely-held ideas of who they are in matters of love and art give way to transformative decisions and the revelation of what comes next.
When Leda Galvan, a gifted writer who can also occasionally be given to self-destruction, gets in to the school of her dreams and sets out to make a new life in Austin, she soon discovers that the heaviest baggage cannot always be left behind.
Funny, smart, and self-aware, The Lights is also a philosophical inquiry into the nature of how we connect in our most intimate bonds, sure to please fans of both Emma Straub and Eric Rohmer. As Leda and the men in her orbit grapple with sex, betrayal, honesty, and each other, their own closely-held ideas of who they are in matters of love and art give way to transformative decisions and the revelation of what comes next.
- GenresFiction
216 pages, Paperback
Published May 9, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 19, 2017
Novels about people treating one another carelessly in academic settings are some of my favorite things, as are unlikable protagonists. The Lights has both, but it still missed the mark for me for reasons I'm struggling to identify. I'm not sure if I will like it more or less upon reflection, or if I will remember it at all.
June 3, 2017
Being 1-2 degrees of separation from the author, I wanted to like this way more than I did.
I think maybe the subject didn't interest me, that perhaps I've become one of those older people who doesn't understand what the younger ones have to say.
I really liked Hemlock Grove, though. Brian's book--not the TV series. I'll be patient for the next great book.
I think maybe the subject didn't interest me, that perhaps I've become one of those older people who doesn't understand what the younger ones have to say.
I really liked Hemlock Grove, though. Brian's book--not the TV series. I'll be patient for the next great book.
July 11, 2017
LITERARY FICTION
Brian McGreevy
The Lights: A Novel
Rare Bird Books (A Barnacle Book)
Paperback, 978-1-9455-7212-8, (also available as an e-book), 216 pgs., $16.95
May 9, 2017
Leda and Mark relocate from New York City to a gentrifying East Austin when Leda receives her Hogwarts letter. In this instance, “Hogwarts” refers to the Michener Center for Writers (MCW), the prestigious graduate program in creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin.
Physical and emotional dislocation, combined with the fierce and paranoid competition among her fellow writers, bring out the worst in Leda, an academic overachiever (“Lisa Simpson–ing”) and insecure twenty-something who drinks too much and believes in portents. Leda falls in with fellow students and best friends Harry and Jason (“imaginary Norman Mailers and George Plimptons toasting their defiant political incorrectness”), forming a dysfunctional threesome. As Leda and Harry compete for influence over Jason, we come to understand Leda is a predator who preys mostly upon herself.
The Lights: A Novel is the second novel from Brian McGreevy. Himself a Michener fellow, McGreevy is also cocreator of The Son, a recent television adaptation of Philipp Meyer’s novel of the same title for AMC, starring Pierce Brosnan. The Lights is highly entertaining literary fiction, excelling at sleight of hand with arch humor and misdirection.
The Lights is structurally inventive and creatively designed, written in the form of a letter (“It is at this point that this epistle must make an unforgivable turn for the Dickensian”), the kind you write for “the benevolent cult” of Alcoholic Anonymous to make amends to those you’ve wronged, complete with italics, ALL CAPS, and a stray footnote. The kitschy cover has a kind of Valley of the Dolls–meets-1930s private-eye-pulp-fiction vibe going on.
Austin, where the cicadas create a “wall of sound,” and “a high degree of intelligence and planlessness were virtually prerequisites for residence,” is a character unto itself in McGreevy’s novel. He pays homage to the city and writing center he loves, while simultaneously poking good-humored fun at cultural pretensions; “Well, Terry” is a running joke throughout.
McGreevy’s other characters are hard to like, except for poor Mark, who doesn’t have enough personality to qualify as a character. Just as impatience with Leda’s superficial first-person narrative sets in, and you begin to wonder why anyone desires this woman’s company, much less loves her, McGreevy dives into her backstory, creating a complex, sympathetic psychological portrait of a damaged daughter who learned by example: a mother’s betrayal and a childhood gone badly wrong have created a “manipulator addict by-product of a manipulator addict.” You’d drink, too.
The jealousy and paranoid competition between the grad students are redolent of junior high, the dialogue reminiscent of Gilmore Girls, if they were mean.
“Part of me is still trying to win a philosophical argument,” says Jason the screenwriter, lamenting Hollywood’s lowest common denominator. “Fuck philosophy, what am I, a playwright?”
This combination dangerously approaches caricature early in the novel, but then the almost-farce turns itself inside-out, clichés become people who earn a reluctant affection, and The Lights approaches Merritt Tierce’s Love Me Back, and becomes something approaching profound.
Originally published in Lone Star Literary Life.
Brian McGreevy
The Lights: A Novel
Rare Bird Books (A Barnacle Book)
Paperback, 978-1-9455-7212-8, (also available as an e-book), 216 pgs., $16.95
May 9, 2017
Leda and Mark relocate from New York City to a gentrifying East Austin when Leda receives her Hogwarts letter. In this instance, “Hogwarts” refers to the Michener Center for Writers (MCW), the prestigious graduate program in creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin.
Physical and emotional dislocation, combined with the fierce and paranoid competition among her fellow writers, bring out the worst in Leda, an academic overachiever (“Lisa Simpson–ing”) and insecure twenty-something who drinks too much and believes in portents. Leda falls in with fellow students and best friends Harry and Jason (“imaginary Norman Mailers and George Plimptons toasting their defiant political incorrectness”), forming a dysfunctional threesome. As Leda and Harry compete for influence over Jason, we come to understand Leda is a predator who preys mostly upon herself.
The Lights: A Novel is the second novel from Brian McGreevy. Himself a Michener fellow, McGreevy is also cocreator of The Son, a recent television adaptation of Philipp Meyer’s novel of the same title for AMC, starring Pierce Brosnan. The Lights is highly entertaining literary fiction, excelling at sleight of hand with arch humor and misdirection.
The Lights is structurally inventive and creatively designed, written in the form of a letter (“It is at this point that this epistle must make an unforgivable turn for the Dickensian”), the kind you write for “the benevolent cult” of Alcoholic Anonymous to make amends to those you’ve wronged, complete with italics, ALL CAPS, and a stray footnote. The kitschy cover has a kind of Valley of the Dolls–meets-1930s private-eye-pulp-fiction vibe going on.
Austin, where the cicadas create a “wall of sound,” and “a high degree of intelligence and planlessness were virtually prerequisites for residence,” is a character unto itself in McGreevy’s novel. He pays homage to the city and writing center he loves, while simultaneously poking good-humored fun at cultural pretensions; “Well, Terry” is a running joke throughout.
McGreevy’s other characters are hard to like, except for poor Mark, who doesn’t have enough personality to qualify as a character. Just as impatience with Leda’s superficial first-person narrative sets in, and you begin to wonder why anyone desires this woman’s company, much less loves her, McGreevy dives into her backstory, creating a complex, sympathetic psychological portrait of a damaged daughter who learned by example: a mother’s betrayal and a childhood gone badly wrong have created a “manipulator addict by-product of a manipulator addict.” You’d drink, too.
The jealousy and paranoid competition between the grad students are redolent of junior high, the dialogue reminiscent of Gilmore Girls, if they were mean.
“Part of me is still trying to win a philosophical argument,” says Jason the screenwriter, lamenting Hollywood’s lowest common denominator. “Fuck philosophy, what am I, a playwright?”
This combination dangerously approaches caricature early in the novel, but then the almost-farce turns itself inside-out, clichés become people who earn a reluctant affection, and The Lights approaches Merritt Tierce’s Love Me Back, and becomes something approaching profound.
Originally published in Lone Star Literary Life.
July 18, 2017
A little too close to home
Jeezoman (quite the Pittsburgh expression.) It's almost uncanny the way this book parallels my own life in my 20s and 30s, although aside from all the artistic, literary and emotional angst, I had a thriving punk rock scene and way too much fun. That kind of bothered me, the characters were in Austin, for chrissakes, where was the damn music?! But I quibble. In The Lights, as in Hemlock Grove, McGreevy's previous book, it's the writing that takes center stage. The absolute adrenaline of putting the right words together to invoke the subtle, or not so subtle, nuance. The giddiness that results from the mot juste. The word sense that keeps the plot barreling toward an ending that, unfortunately, doesn't ring true.
Jeezoman (quite the Pittsburgh expression.) It's almost uncanny the way this book parallels my own life in my 20s and 30s, although aside from all the artistic, literary and emotional angst, I had a thriving punk rock scene and way too much fun. That kind of bothered me, the characters were in Austin, for chrissakes, where was the damn music?! But I quibble. In The Lights, as in Hemlock Grove, McGreevy's previous book, it's the writing that takes center stage. The absolute adrenaline of putting the right words together to invoke the subtle, or not so subtle, nuance. The giddiness that results from the mot juste. The word sense that keeps the plot barreling toward an ending that, unfortunately, doesn't ring true.
September 15, 2017
Sorry couldn't get past page 3 when 'autistic pervert' was used by a character to insult another much like the R word is used as a put down. Millions of other insults out there. I think we are past this no?
October 31, 2021
Oh my good God this is absolutely perfect.
August 16, 2023
started as a 4, became a 3, then became a 5.
i did not expect so many twists from a contemporary, but it is a brian mcgreevy novel, so maybe i should have.
i did not expect so many twists from a contemporary, but it is a brian mcgreevy novel, so maybe i should have.
December 11, 2024
I tried reading this before. I was terribly depressed and didn't give it a fair shake. Reading it this second time I'm taken with the writing. This book is very well written.
It wasn't for me. Maybe you'll like it.
It wasn't for me. Maybe you'll like it.
August 17, 2017
Anything Brian McGreevy puts out, is a masterpiece.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews