First Light

by Charles Baxter

Overview

Hugh Welch has cared for his little sister Dorsey ever since they were children, when Dorsey looked at him as though he were a god. But when Dorsey returns to their small Michigan hometown with a successful career as an astrophysicist and a happy family life, Hugh, who has a long habit of worrying about his sister, realizes that it’s his own life he has to cure, not Dorsey’s. As they explore their complicated history over one hot Fourth of July weekend, they’ll come to terms with the experiences that put such distance between them and discover the imperfect love that ties them as siblings.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307948519
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/14/2012
Series:	Vintage Contemporaries Series
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	447,524
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Charles Baxter is the author of the novels The Feast of Love (nominated for the National Book Award), The Soul Thief, Saul and Patsy, and Shadow Play, and the collections Gryphon, Believers, A Relative Stranger, Through the Safety Net, and Harmony of the World. He lives in Minneapolis and teaches at the University of Minnesota and in the M.F.A. Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

Hometown:

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Date of Birth:

May 13, 1947

Place of Birth:

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Education:

B. A., Macalester College, 1969; Ph.D., State University of New York at Buffalo, 1974

Website:

http://www.charlesbaxter.com

What People are Saying About This

J. M. Coepzee

"A book one reads with pleasure from the first word to the last for the delicacy and truth of its perceptions."

Susan Kenney

"He gives so much knowledge and depth and feeling to his characters and through them, to the reader, that the whole fabric of the novel, from firecrackers in the back yard to the Big Bang theory of the universe, seems to shimmer with a luminous clarity of detail that is absolutely breathtaking."

Editorial Reviews

A remarkably supple novel that gleams with the smoky chiaroscuro of family love.”—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times 
 
“A novel of great emotional power, of heart-twisting intimacy and intellectual force.” —Newsday  
 
“An intricately reflective, simply beautiful book.” —Los Angeles Times
 
“Only a virtuoso could manage such a narrative, and Baxter is and does.” —The Washington Post Book World
 
“A book one reads with pleasure from the first word to the last for the delicacy and truth of its perceptions.” —J. M. Coetzee
 
“[Baxter’s] prose is like filtered late-summer light dancing through leaves not quite turned yet—a light bathed with sadness, humor, and a clear, intelligent intensity.” —USA Today 
 
“First Light is a novel that moves backward in time, traveling from past to present as though through a tunnel of memory. . . . Like Chekhov, [Baxter] is both tough-minded and compassionate, and he never makes his characters more or less than what they are. They are human, and that in itself is a rare achievement for a writer, a thing to be celebrated above and beyond all other achievements in this splendid book.” —Paul Auster
 
“Here is a voice worth listening to, a voice that has shown itself, in this wonderful, magical novel, to command the music of the spheres.” —San Jose Mercury News
 
“Without question, Charles Baxter is among our best contemporary writers—always graceful, always dramatic. Superlatives are insufficient. Here is literature. Here is art.” —Tim O’Brien
 
“Charles Baxter asks the most wonderful questions and addresses the most essential subjects—the things we have been thinking but haven’t . . . known how to begin to say.” —Francine Prose
 
“It’s exceedingly rare to come across writing as seamless and engrossing as Charles Baxter’s.” —The Plain Dealer
 
“Light and dark, the motifs of Baxter’s haunting and human fiction touch the reader in evocative ways.” —The Boston Globe
 
“Baxter’s passionate writing raises the level of regard for life itself, let alone the art of writing.” —Howard Norman
 
“Moves over everyday details with the inexorable, contrary tug of memory.” —Time
 
“First Light illuminates the way out of the abyss and into the miracles and wonders that comprise life.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune
 
“First Light is a daredevil technical feat, and very much more besides that. Charles Baxter’s long-term admirers will find that it satisfies their highest hopes.” —Madison Smartt Bell

From the Publisher

Having published two books of short stories, Baxter does a masterful job of combining form with function in his first novel. The story begins with a Fourth of July celebration. Dorsey Welch and her husband, Simon, an actor, are spending the holiday with Dorsey's brother, Hugh. The visit is awkward. Years, distance and experience separate brother and sister. Dorsey, always the smart one, is a professor of astrophysics. Her brother, once a promising athlete, is now a car salesman. Simon exacerbates the situation; a sly, insinuating man, he continually mocks his stolid brother-in-law. Chapter by chapter, the story moves back in time, through the siblings' college years, their adolescence and childhood, to Hugh's first glimpse of his baby sister, exploring the things that shaped these people. The characterizations here are superb, as is the writing. There are no fireworks in this story, apart from the Fourth of July pyrotechnics, but this imaginatively conceived, evocative novel will hold the reader's attention from first to last. (September 8)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

As an astrophysicist Dorsey Welch studies the origins of the universe and the gravitational forces that make it cohere. Similarly, this novel moves backward in time to trace the evolving antagonisms and the bonds of love between Dorsey and her brother Hugh. At one point Hugh says to his sister, ``You always go . . . I always stay,'' and this simple statement sums up their radically different lives. Hugh remains in the small town where they were born, lives in the house inherited from his parents, and sells Buicks. Dorsey travels to California, bears the child of an eccentric professor, and marries an even more eccentric actor. Bridging all these differences, however, is a powerfully evoked sense of family. Baxter's style is sharp and elegant, and his characters are convincing. Albert E. Wilhelm, English Dept., Tennessee Technological Univ., Cookeville

Library Journal

"A intricately reflective, simply beautiful book." -- Los Angeles Times

Elizabeth Tallent

"A remarkable supple novel that gleams with a smoky chiaroscuro, a familiar love we recall through time." -- The New York Times

Michiko Kakutani