Product Description
Every family has a story. Every story, eventually, must be told. For most of their lives, Julian Perel and his sister, Paula, lived in a house cast in silence, witnesses to a father struggling with a devastating secret too painful to share. Though their father took his demons to the grave, his past refuses to rest. As adults, brother and sister struggle to find their voices. A scientist governed by numbers and logic, Julian now lives an ordered life of routine and seclusion. My father gave up his language and his homeland. But he carried his sadness with him, under his skin. It was mine now. In contrast, Paula has entered the world as eagerly as Julian retracts from it. An aspiring opera singer, she is always moving, buoyant with sound. Singing was the only gift I could offer to my father. I filled the house with music. I tried to give him joy. . . .Yet both their lives begin to change on a Wednesday, miercoles, the day that sounds like miracles. Before embarking on a European opera tour, Paula asks her housekeeper, Sola, to stay at her place--and to look after Julian in the apartment above. Yet Sola, too, has a story. I want to clean myself like the window of a house, make myself clear for things to pass through. Flat and quiet. As Paula uncovers pieces of her father's early life in Budapest and the horrifying truth of his past, Julian bears witness to Sola's story--revelations that help all three learn how to both surrender and revere the shadows that have followed them for so long.The Speed of Light is a powerful debut about three unforgettable souls who overcome the tragedies of the past to reconnect with one another and the world around them. In an extraordinary accomplishment, Elizabeth Rosner has created a novel of love and redemption that proves the pain of the untold story is far greater than even the most difficult truth.From the Hardcover edition.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 38 reviews)

Couldn't get into this book by Fuzzy Lizard (Georgia, USA)

2 Stars
September 22, 2009
The plot for this novel sounds interesting enough, but for some reason I had a hard time getting into this book. The story seemed to drag & I lost interest.

A verbal and sensual pleasure by Lois Requist (SF Bay Area)

5 Stars
June 19, 2009
A close friend brought me Elizabeth Rosner's the speed of light. Almost immediately, I was drawn into the lives of the three main characters. Julian, with his 11 televisions, his fears, withdrawal, and need for preciseness. I saw Paula as the lightweight and she probably was, although she was more deeply impacted by events than I expected. And, Sola, with probably the greatest burden to bear, still can extend herself toward another human with grace and kindness. The ginkgo tree with its yellow leaves which eventually form a pool of yellow on the ground is symbolic of the characters who are "dying and alive at the same time." Aren't we all? The subtle and rich use of language was a constant pleasure throughout the book. Rosner tells of the most awful events and the sweetest in an evenhanded manner that makes the stories highly believable. As Sola and Julian shyly reach out to each other, I felt that in a world where horrendous things are done by people to other people, humans will still reach out to each other, because our deepest and best selves crave the connection with other humans. The scientific definitions were the only part that didn't do much for me. It's a book I will long remember for the characters and their ways of handling grief while keeping their basic goodness.

A gentle story about loss, grief and redemption. by bookczuk (Charleston, SC)

4 Stars
October 24, 2008
A gentle story about loss, grief and redemption. Told in an interesting manner- each character had a different font in the book, though sometimes, the fonts of the two siblings were so similar I had trouble deciding who was speaking. It was Sola who won my heart though- with her delicate phrasing of the English language, and her struggle to help the ghosts of her past rest in peace, unforgotten.

Moving, Thought-provoking, Poetic, Intense, A Refeshingly Unique Approach by Monty J. Heying (Alameda, CA)

5 Stars
June 19, 2008
I finished this book sitting on the BART subway, heading home from work. I felt a pang of longing as I put down the weathered, heavily underlined pages. Julian and Sola and Paula are now a part of me--their stories resonating with my deepest feelings about love, connectedness, and purpose. I've recommended the book to just about everyone I know and bought copies for my two daughters. I read from it to my ladyfriend--Isaac's inspiring words to Paula, a soprano who gains suppressed knowledge about her father and loses her voice. No more powerful words have I read in literature.(When I first read this part I was standing on BART, book in one hand, heading for work. I couldn't contain the tears. I walked up the stairs into the light of morning in a daze, wiping my eyes.) Thank you, Liz, for enduring whatever it took to create this work. People who are psychologically well-defended may not "get it". But if you are capable of making the trip with both eyes open, this book will take you to unforgettable places, deepening your knowledge and understanding of the human condition.

Thumbs up by Fake McFaker (Japan)

4 Stars
May 21, 2004
In found the Speed of Light to be an extremely intense and original book that takes an in-depth look at second-generation holocaust victims. This book is written from the viewpoint of three different They each refer to themselves as I. The characters are differentiated from each other in the book simply by change in fount. Each character has its own font. And I also noticed that each character has an individual way of thinking and this also sets them apart and really shows how well written this book is. This is an interesting way to write this story since each of these people has a different internal holocaust experience and this is another way to communicate these individual experiences. The story is about three people Julian, his sister Paula and their house keeper Sola. Julian and Paula's father was a holocaust survivor. Julian is a reclusive, genius shut-in who stays in his room all day writing a physics dictionary and watching his eleven televisions, which he has stacked in a large square. Paula was born which an amazing talent to sing. She travels abroad, training in opera, and also learns the dark past of their father's. Sola is a housekeeper who has just witnessed a horrible event where she lost most of her loved ones. He story unravels as we learn at the same time about the main characters. The story amazing timing it slowly reveals the history of its characters all about the same time. This lays down an interesting foundation for the characters. This rapid jumping of time frames really keeps the reader on the edge of his or her seat.The Speed of Light is filled with great detail that. The book was very good but at the beginning I found it hard to understand who was talking because of the fount changes and all of the strange first person but once you get into it is a really great book. I would strongly recommend this book.

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

	Blue Nude: A Novel by Elizabeth Rosner (Author) In this sensual, intimate novel, prizewinning poet and bestselling author Elizabeth Rosner tells the engrossing and timely story of an artist and his model, and the moral and political implications of their relationship. Born in the shadow of postwar Germany, Danzig is a once-prominent painter who now teaches at an art institute in San Francisco. But while Danzig shares wisdom and technique with students, his own canvases remain mysteriously empty. When a compelling new model named...
	What Was Lost: A Novel by Catherine O'Flynn (Author) A tender and sharply observant debut novel about a missing young girl—winner of the Costa First Novel Award and long-listed for the Booker Prize, the Orange Prize, and The Guardian First Book Award In the 1980s, Kate Meaney—“Top Secret” notebook and toy monkey in tow—is hard at work as a junior detective. Busy trailing “suspects” and carefully observing everything around her at the newly opened Green Oaks shopping mall, she forms an unlikely friendship with Adrian, the...
	Mountains of the Mind: Adventures in Reaching the Summit by Robert Macfarlane (Author) Combining accounts of legendary mountain ascents with vivid descriptions of his own forays into wild, high landscapes, Robert McFarlane reveals how the mystery of the world’s highest places has came to grip the Western imagination—and perennially draws legions of adventurers up the most perilous slopes. His story begins three centuries ago, when mountains were feared as the forbidding abodes of dragons and other mysterious beasts. In the mid-1700s the attentions of both science and...
	Jung's Map of the Soul: An Introduction by Murray Stein (Author) C.G. Jung's ideas continue to be of interest to many readers. Murray Stein, a longtime Jungian therapist and author, provides readers with an accessible introduction to the essential Jungian ideas. A major challenge to anyone who is trying to understand Jung's thought is the piecemeal way in which Jung communicated his ideas over his 60-year career - the result was 18 volumes of dense, often repetitious, prose. Stein provides a unified, comprehensive summary of Jung's vision of psychological...
	Swamplands of the Soul: New Life in Dismal Places (Studies in Jungian Psychology By Jungian Analysts) by James Hollis (Author)