The Age of Perpetual Light - Softcover

Weil, Josh

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802128564 ISBN 13: 9780802128560

Publisher: Grove Press, 2018

Synopsis

Short stories that "situate themselves as natural heirs to such masterpieces as Denis Johnson's 'Train Dreams' and James Joyce's 'The Dead.'" —The New York Times Book Review

Beginning at the dawn of the past century, in the early days of electrification, and moving into an imagined future in which the world is lit day and night, each tale in The Age of Perpetual Light follows characters through different eras in American history: a Jewish dry goods peddler who falls in love with an Amish woman while showing her the wonders of an Edison Lamp; a 1940 farmers' uprising against the unfair practices of a power company; a Serbian immigrant teenage boy in 1990s Vermont desperate to catch a glimpse of an experimental satellite; a back-to-the-land couple forced to grapple with their daughter's autism during winter's longest night.

From the prize-winning author of The Great Glass Sea, these stories explore themes of progress, the pursuit of knowledge, and humankind's eternal attempt to decrease the darkness in the world.

"A rich, often dazzling collection of short stories linked by themes while ranging widely in style from Babel-like fables to gritty noir and sci-fi . . . engrossing, persuasively detailed, and written with a deep affection for the way language can, in masterful hands, convey us to marvelous new worlds." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"A storyteller of the first order." —Joshua Ferris, author of the National Book Award finalist Then We Came to the End

"A spectacular talent." —Lauren Groff, New York Times–bestselling author of Fates and Furies

About this title

About the Author

Josh Weil is the author of The Great Glass Sea and The New Valley. A Fulbright Fellow and National Book Foundation 5 under 35 honoree, he has been awarded The American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Sue Kaufman Prize, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and a Pushcart. He lives in California’s Sierra Nevada.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I’m behind the barn, splitting burnwood, when I see the bear coming for our daughter. It’s December, dusk. At my back: high piles of cut rounds. Out in the field: the bucked trees stacked, their drag marks dark in all the snow, the pines looking almost black beyond. And between their trunks: a patch of true black moving. Everything else is still—the stone wall, the glass greenhouse, the sledding hill behind our home, packed hard by the weight of my wife and daughter gone down run after run—except a spot of orange: Orly in her snowsuit. Rolling snow boulders. Down by the old stone wall at the edge of the woods. Beneath the splitter’s rumble, the shaking of the pine boughs is a silent ripple washing steadily towards her.

For a second I can feel her in my hands—the heft of her when I first pick her up, my arms strained with her struggling—and then it’s just the log again and Orly is out there, suddenly standing straight up, staring into the trees. Her hands are bare—she will not suffer gloves, shucks mittens as soon as she thinks she’s out of sight—her fingers stained so bright by markers I can see them slowly curling towards her palms. She takes a snowsuit-stiffened step. Another. The first time we zipped her into the hunter’s camouflage, I crouched down, winked. Hey bub, I said, get me a beer, eh? Bess laughed. But Orly only asked, Who’s Bub? And when I poked her bright orange belly with a wriggly finger, my wife said, Ev, the way I knew meant Stop.

Edition details

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802128564
• ISBN 13: 9780802128560
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272