THE SPEED OF LIGHT : A Novel

New York, NY: Ballantine Books/Random House, 2001. First Edition 1st Printing. Hardcover. New/Near Fine. Text/NEW & Bright. Author signed, 2001 First Edition, 1st Printing. Bi-color boards/Fine. DJ/Fine w/trace shelf wear. Dynamics of family histories both shared & clouded by silence of the too painful. An acclaimed novel from Elizabeth Roser which has been translated into 9 languages. Story of 3 young people dealing w/past family sufferings. There is Julian Perel & sister Paula, familiar w/Auschwitz prison numbers on their Hungarian-American father's arm who dies without sharing his past, and Sola, who witnessed destruction of her South American home village. As adults Julian, like his father, is a scientist governed by numbers & logic, consciously adopting the same orderly life of routine & seclusion as heir; Julian has an apartment above that of sister Paula. Paula, by contrast, joined the social world as eagerly as Julian rejected it, is an promising opera singer, and always felt singing "was the only gift I could offer to my father" for filling our house with music would give him joy. So it was, on a certain wedsday ("miercoles" in Spanish which sounds like miracles), before embarking on a 6-week European opera tour, Sola, Paula's housekeeper agrees to stay in her lodgings & keep an eye on Julian in the apartment above. Yet Sola, too, has a story; she witnessed the destruction of her native village and has been silent; wanting most to be cleanse, as home windows, to "allow things to pass through". In Europe, Paulas unearths pieces of her father's early life in Budapest, the traditional joy of music in family life, and other details prior to the Holocaust. Meanwhile, Julian becomes privy to Sola's untold story. Revelations that help all three learn how to both surrender & revere shadows of the past that have long cast heavily upon all three. 241 pgs, 12 chapters, narrated in voices of the 3 protangonists.