In Sunlight and in Shadow

This is sort-of a compliment. I suffer from bouts of insomnia, and have found that putting on an audiobook to occupy my brain is a great way to get back to sleep at 4 in the morning. It's also a great way to listen to a book without any of the distractions of the outside world, and really listen to the writing.

This only becomes problematic when a story becomes engaging (for instance, I initially started listening to Little Dorrit to put myself back to sleep, but at some point became so interested in the story that I would wake up and rewind back to hear what I'd slept through.)

So far, I have found In Sunlight and in Shadow is a perfect book to fall back to sleep to. The writing is dreamlike, lyrical and descriptive, the plot pacing so slow and the narration so generally monotone (there's nothing worse then when a male narrator badly imitates a woman's voice -- the pitch change can shock you back awake) that this is perfect insomnia listening. I fell asleep to it one night, and dreamt I was in New York.

My only issue with it is that by day, my waking brain cannot stay with it. I listened to a description of Catherine taking a breath in a music hall about 3 times and spaced out every time before I figured out what she was actually doing there. I honestly thought she was an oboe player. I had to read a review to learn that she was a singer.

To do this book justice, I think I'll go back to listening to it only at 4 am, and find something a little more engaging to listen to by day.

PS - A great thing about the Audible app on the iphone, is that you can program it to go off - and it sort of fades out very subtly. This is especially recommended when you are nearing the end of a book. The last thing you need at 4:45 am is to be jolted back awake with: "Audible hopes you have enjoyed this program!"

If it were 8 hours, I might have gotten through it, but it was about 20 hours too long to suffer. The story sounded to great but narration didn't.

Lyrical, gorgeous and romantic.

The Piano, Frank Conroy: New York City; the 1940s; Glorious romantic style. Overcoming great obstacles against hard reality; growing into adulthood through travail and an unwillingness to give up.

Enunciation, an ability to manage voices well and convincingly. Easy to listen to for nearly 30 hours.

It made me patiently watch and engage, unusual for me.

Give this book a chance, but be prepared to sip. This is poetry as well as fiction, and it requires time and attention. I found it well worth it.

Yes.

Not for me. It is not a book I would recommend to any of my friends.

I am still struggling through this recording, but have decided to switch to the written book. I've come to the conclusion that the narrator must have substantially missed the tone the author was going for.

Helprin is the author of one of my favorite books of all time - Freddy and Fredericka - which I have listened to at least three times. The narrator of that one, Robert Ian Mackenzie, gets it exactly right. No doubt In Sunlight and In Shadow is a different kind of book, but I can't help but feel there are moments of irony that are completely miscast in Runnette's sing-song melancholy tone.

I'm going to have a try at the printed work because I think Helprin is trying to do something that needs doing. I
think he is trying to cast a line from World War II to the present and show the seeds that have brought us where we are today - the difference between paper wealth and real productivity, and between image and identity. He's up to the challenge. I'm reserving judgment on whether he's accomplished it or not.

This is one of the few occasions that I've felt a narrator truly compromised my experience of a book. Too bad. Runnette has a nice voice, but he takes elegiac to a new high (or low) here.

Character development, story line, evocations of NYC at a particular time.

Never! I finally went to the library and borrowed the hard copy to read as I could not stand the sing-song quality of his voice, What a disservice to the terrific work of a very talented writer.

storyline

i now am interested in war stories

he drove me crazy with to much long detailed descriptions. i would often forget what it was he was talking about. my mind wandering off and wishing to just hear story

sad

will avoid this author

This author just goes on and on with his descriptions. I found my mind wandering off because of all of the unnecessary imagery.

Years ago I read Helprin’s A Soldier in the Great War and found it to be an impressive description of the stupidity of war. In Sunlight and in Shadow he jumps back to WWII from a somber post WWII present. The portions of the book that cover the war are first rate. Unfortunately his descriptions of Harry’s romance with a young singer in NYC is too sophomoric and so overwhelmingly romanticized they are difficult to listen to. The words cloy. Perhaps this is due to the bated breath or the reader; as if this love affair between a thirty something vet and Katherine (no virgin) were something on the pedestal of adolescence. There is a bit of F. Scott Fitzgerald to the scenes in the Hamptons among the well-heeled set. This is juxtaposed to the gritty business of protection rackets in NYC. The book is also interminably long due to rambling descriptions and a fondness for employing an excess of adjectives. If you can get past the saccharine romance and the ponderous verbiage there is a good story with a bit of depressing and maybe inevitable ending.

No. Perhaps the narrator was handicapped by the material, which was tedious and overwritten, but the combination of Helprin's diarrhea of words and Runnette's whispery earnestness was deadly.

Cut out half the words and rethink the ones he kept. Can't say about the story line because after two hours of listening I'd just gotten to the boy meets girl part.

Yes, my real problem with this book was the author.

No.

I bought this book on the recommendation of someone without noticing that it was by the same author as Fred and Frederika, another book I was unable to finish. Helprin is overly enamored by his own writing - much of which is nonsensical. When the words he has assembled do make sense, too often they are hammering the reader over the head with political or social philosophies inappropriate to the era in which the story takes place. After listening to two hours I realized In Sunlight and in Shadow is layered with pretty words and endless descriptions that give an appearance of something important, but underneath the book its pretentious drivel. And that's when I decided to turn it off.