Rating: 
Summary: Aches
Review: This novel is rather astonishing, achingly beautiful in its evocation of the intensities and spiritual mandates of young love. And separating the narrative of the two teen lovers, William and Emily (and their need to escape the late-sixties nation collapsing around them) is a brilliant exploration also of adult longing and transgression, of parental obligations and limitations. Throughout his narrative Clark includes piercing assertions of emotional and spiritual clarity--fearless hypotheses of how life feels and how love works--the storyteller himself demonstrating the seriousness of his purpose and the unimpeachable importance of new love, and our ways of trying--often desperately--to preserve it. I find I really can't, with my overblown language here, do justice to the subtle, haunting experience of this novel. Suffice it to say I think the book deserves panoramic attention and acclaim. Its attentions are commanding and sensitive, its connectivities never glib or too babyboomer-sentimental. It will leave you shaken but safe, somehow better off and, though perhaps this is particular to my case, feeling inevitably older.
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