Light Years

This small and intimate book conjures up an essential image of a writer, full of perceptions and a wealth of memories, sitting alone at a desk crafting them into carefully honed sentences alive with sudden, sometimes painful insights. Schreiber probably writes with a computer, yet her readers will picture her by an open window with a pad and pencil or at most a manual typewriter. After leaving the hectic world of Manhattan journalism (sports editor of the New York Times, then an editor of the Book Review), Schreiber chose to live in the quiet Columbia County community of Ancram in upstate New York. She learned to accept being an outsider, to relish the growth of milkweed and the arrival of the monarch butterflies. She also draws on her surroundings and the personality of her old house to accept the deaths of her mother and father, followed by that of her only brother. Inevitably, this leads her to the contemplation of her own mortality. This is spare and intense writing that speculates about why we are the way we are, and how we are formed by our own thoughts. Few have either the aptitude or the opportunity for such reflection. To share it is a rare privilege. First serial to Glamour; author tour. (Sept.)