The Speed of Light

When 31-year-old New York ophthalmologist Nathan Kline gets on an elevator in the wrong building, his mistake affects the rest of his life. Also on the elevator is Carla Weisenthal, a beautiful, cultivated art history major at Smith. After a spirited, though stiff, courtship (addressed as much to Carla's parents as to her), he weds the reluctant bride, and their loveless marriage dooms Nathan to a miserable life riddled with career disappointments and numerous affairs. Oblique and arch at times, the writing is often pretentious: ""The plump mound of ass he had once, briefly, adored had lost its shine and its scent. She was a density bereft of line, an irksome contemptibility."" This earnest, meticulously observed character study fails to impart energy to the protagonist or his post-midlife regrets. Nathan's a hopeless snob, but the waste of his life, and Pashman's views on marriage as ""a struggle to accept mortality,"" may inspire some introspection in the reader. And as a novel of Upper East Side Jewish manners from the 1950s to the present, Pashman's debut has telling scenes that ring absolutely true. (Aug.)