First Light by Charles Baxter

From the Publisher

In a novel of extraordinary resonance and power, Charles Baxter takes us backward through the lives of Hugh and Dorsey Welch, a brother and sister born and raised in a small Michigan town. We meet them as adults - Dorsey , an eminent astrophysicist, Hugh a quiet unassuming Buick salesman in their hometown - and discover their pasts: difficult marriages, dark and destructive love affairs, moments of triumph, of disappointment, of sheer joy.

As he traces their paths back to the day of Dorsey's birth, Baxter reveals the experiences that put such a distance between Hugh and Dorsey, and the ties of imperfect love that bind them together. And as Paul Auster has written, "gradually we begin to understand that Baxter is telling our own story, that this is how our own lives are formed within us."

Publishers Weekly

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)

Library Journal

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

Elizabeth Tallent

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

Michiko Kakutani

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

What People Are Saying

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."

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

Details from Seller

• ISBN: 0140100911
• Publisher: Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
• Pub. Date: October 1988
• Condition:

Comments from the Seller: 1988-10-01 Paperback New Brand new book!