The Angle of Falling Light A Novel

In this her fifth novel, Gologorsky returns to the setting of all her books—the American working class of Long Island and the Bronx, where the last two generations of Americans have been scarred by the domestic side of foreign wars and by drugs—from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan, from heroin to oxycodone—good people seeking a good life amidst obstacles that can seem insurmountable.

In The Angle of Falling Light, the protagonist Tessa, has no model close to her for the kind of life she’d like to lead. Her sister Marla starts using drugs, following the lead of their uncle Hack, who softens his days with alcohol and weed. Her stepfather Scotty is a vet struggling with depression, and her mom Nina can’t cope. Nina takes refuge with a new lover and Tess, too, finds safety in a new relationship if not the direction she so desperately seeks.

The Angle of Falling Light is a book with a big cast of troubled innocents, everyone looking for a way forward, a lesson in how to give love while still putting yourself first, one of the most difficult of life’s challenges. As Gologorsky has it, some will lose this battle, while others will at least survive it.

BEVERLY GOLOGORSKY’S first book, the novel The Things We Do to Make it Home, published by Random House, was a New York Times Notable Book, a Los Angeles Times Best Fiction book, and a finalist for the Barnes and Noble Discover Great Writers Award. About her second novel, Stop Here, Publishers Weekly wrote, “The author treats each singular story line with insight, compassion and no sentimentality.” Her third novel, Can You See the Wind? was described by Ron Jacobs in Counterpunch as “utterly fantastic and completely believable.” Describing Gologorsky’s fourth novel, Every Body Has a Story, Elizabeth Strout wrote, “Your heart might be ripped out by this book, but it will get placed back inside with a larger capacity to love and beat on.” And now in The Angle of Falling Light, she presents one of her most unforgettable heroines in Tessa, as the author continues her novel cycle of our contemporary American tragedy and the attempts of her characters to avert it, one by one.