Böcker av Gina Berriault

Vivian Carpentier, confined by her role as an upper class woman in the 1940s, gleans meaning only from erotic love. Troubled by the elusiveness of men, yet convinced that they run the world, she can barely conceal her desperation to entice. Struggling with motherhood and the failure of marriage, she takes jobs to bridge intervals between lovers. She sings in a hotel bar, sells dresses, and nurses her father's friend through his last illness, hoping to atone for a self-centered life. The constant in Vivian's life is her son, David. Having seen her worst and best moments, he provides her with consolation and a reason for living, "In those days of her lover's absence, she grew fascinated with her son's beauty .... with the hard blue of his eyes, with all the particulars of his face, the pliability of his lips". The Son is the haunting story of a woman who desires "something more, as if something more had been promised her that was not yet given".

A master of the short form, Gina Berriault stands somewhere between Chekhov and Isaac Babel in style and psychological acuity—and in this beautiful new edition of one of her most beloved novellas, she traces the changing relationships between one woman and two fellow novelists.When it was first published, Andre Dubus said of The Lights of Earth, "Like her stories, it's masterly. Its central character is a woman, Ilona Lewis, who confronts loss of earthly love. But Ilona's experience is far more complex than losing a man because he has become a celebrity. It involves the hearts of all of us seeking the lights of earth, the soul's blessing in its long, dark night." Forsaken by her lover as he gains fame as a novelist, Ilona is stirred by the need to remember the brother she left behind long ago. Revealing the precious worth of life that emerges from the depths of loss, The Lights of Earth is a deeply moving exploration of the soul and a masterwork of style and psychological acuity from one of the most celebrated voices in contemporary fiction. Gina Berriault’s work as a storywriter of great psychological empathy and extraordinary elegance and subtlety was widely praised at the end of her life and, with this reissue of one of her more celebrated short novels, her work can be discovered by a new generation of readers.

"Earlier versions of this novel were published under the title Conference of victims, in 1962 by Atheneum and in 1985 by North Point Press."

A master of the short form, Gina Berriault stands somewhere between Chekhov and Isaac Babel in style and psychological acuity. "Berriault writes real fiction . . . She deepens reality, complements it and affords us the bliss of knowing, for a moment, what we cannot know." —The Nation “A wonderful storyteller and a beautiful writer.” —Grace PaleyThe seven stories—“Infinite Passion of Expectation,” “Tea Ceremony,” “The Mistress,” “The Overcoat,” “Stolen Pleasures,” “Works of the Imagination,” and “Women in Their Beds”—offer a glimpse into the oeuvre of one of the most celebrated voices in American letters.