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Publisher Description
The astonishing novel and “tour de force” about a love affair in postwar France from the iconic author of All That Is (The New York Times Book Review).
Twenty-year-old Yale dropout Phillip Dean is traveling Europe aimlessly in a borrowed car with little money. When he stops for a few days in a church-quiet town near Dijon, he meets Anne-Marie Costallat, a young shop assistant. The two begin an affair both carnal and innocent, and she quickly becomes to him the real France, its beating heart and an object of pure longing.
James Salter, author of Light Years and the memoir Burning the Days, was an essential voice in the evolution of late twentieth-century prose, a stylist on par with Updike and Roth who won the PEN/Faulkner Award for his collection Dusk and Other Stories. One of the first great American novels to speak frankly of human desire free of guilt and shame, A Sport and a Pastime inspired Reynolds Price to call it “as nearly perfect as any American fiction I know.”
This ebook edition features an illustrated biography of James Salter including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.
Twenty-year-old Yale dropout Phillip Dean is traveling Europe aimlessly in a borrowed car with little money. When he stops for a few days in a church-quiet town near Dijon, he meets Anne-Marie Costallat, a young shop assistant. The two begin an affair both carnal and innocent, and she quickly becomes to him the real France, its beating heart and an object of pure longing.
James Salter, author of Light Years and the memoir Burning the Days, was an essential voice in the evolution of late twentieth-century prose, a stylist on par with Updike and Roth who won the PEN/Faulkner Award for his collection Dusk and Other Stories. One of the first great American novels to speak frankly of human desire free of guilt and shame, A Sport and a Pastime inspired Reynolds Price to call it “as nearly perfect as any American fiction I know.”
This ebook edition features an illustrated biography of James Salter including rare photos from the author’s personal collection.
158 Reviews
3.0
Rmcmahon22
Created 14 days agoShare
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“Leaving aside all the sex for a minute (I’ll get to that) this is a beautifully written, somewhat haunting portrayal of France and young lovers, from the point of view of a friend. It’s all cool, spare prose, painting evocative imagery of people and places from just a smattering of carefully-selected details and observations.
It covers a lot of ground in two hundred pages. Thoughtful overlapping depictions of impermanence and transience, life as an outsider, and the interactions of memories and fantasies. This is the kind of story that is shown not told, where setting and season reinforce the characters and the topics covered.
And, yeah, the sex. Graphic, unflinching, occasionally quite erotic. But not ridiculous or the kind of thing that breaks the story’s spell. Which is a good thing; there’s rather a lot. This isn’t a story for the prudish.
This is the kind of book where it ends, and you’re not sure quite *what* happened, but that that’s kind of the point.
While Phillip and the narrator were clear to me and believable, I did find Anne-Marie a little vague and hard to grasp. That’s the main thing holding this back from a full fifth star.”
Daniel
Created 27 days agoShare
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Kyra Coty
Created 29 days agoShare
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“Story was uninterested and disjointed. Intimate scenes were repetitive and grew boring. The idea of having the narrator be a third party added nothing aside confusion while reading. Not worth your time.”Karen MacKinlay
Created 30 days agoShare
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Markslatt
Created 2 months agoShare
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About James Salter
James Salter (1925–2015) was a novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. Salter grew up in New York City and was a career officer and air force pilot until his mid-30s, when the success of his first novel (The Hunters, 1957) led to a full-time writing career. Salter’s potent, lyrical prose earned him acclaim from critics, readers, and fellow novelists. His novel A Sport and a Pastime (1967) was hailed by the New York Times as “nearly perfect as any American fiction.”
Other books by James Salter
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