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 is the author of the acclaimed novel The Things We Do to Make It Home, which was named 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, as well as the novels Stop Here ("unflinching, piercing," according to Elizabeth Strout), Every Body Has a Story, and Can You See The Wind?. Her work has appeared in many anthologies and magazines, including the New York Times, Newsweek, and the Nation. A former editor of two political journals, Viet-Report and Leviathan, Gologorsky has contributed to Feminists Who Changed America, Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered From All Sides, and The Friend Who Got Away: Twenty Women's True-Life Tales of Friendships That Blew Up, Burned Out or Faded Away. She lives in New York and Maine.
