One of the New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Books of 2013
An Amazon Top 100 Book of 2013
A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2013 in Fiction
A New York Times bestseller
A New York Times Editor’s Choice
An Amazon Best Book of the Month, April 2013
Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award,
An AudioFile Editors’ Pick in May 2013
An extraordinary literary event, a major new novel by the PEN/Faulkner winner and acclaimed master, here is a sweeping, seductive, deeply moving story set in the years after World War II.
After his experiences as a young naval officer in battles off Okinawa, Philip Bowman returns to America and finds a position as a book editor. It is a time when publishing is still largely a
private affair—a scattered family of small houses here and in Europe—a time of gatherings in fabled apartments and conversations that continue long into the night. In this world of dinners, deals,
and literary careers, Bowman finds he fits in perfectly. But despite his success, love eludes him. His first marriage goes bad, another fails to happen, and finally he meets a woman who enthralls
him and sets him on a course he could never have imagined for himself.
Romantic and haunting, All That Is explores a life unfolding in a world on the brink of change. It is a dazzling, sometimes devastating labyrinth of love and ambition, a fiercely intimate
account of the great shocks and grand pleasures of being alive.
Editorial Reviews
Editorial Reviews
“A beautiful novel, with sufficient love,
heartbreak, vengeance, identity confusion, longing, and euphoria of language to
have satisfied Shakespeare.” —John Irving, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“A consistently elegant and enjoyable novel,
full of verve and wisdom.” —Julian Barnes, New York Times bestselling author
“Enthralling…A vividly imagined and beautifully
written evocation of a postwar world.” —John Banville, Man Booker Prize–winning author
“The best novel I’ve read in years. All
That Is will be treasured by its readers. Salter’s vivid, lucid
prose does exquisite justice to his subject—the relentless struggle to make
good on our own humanity. Once again he has delivered to us a novel of the
highest artistry.” —Tim O’Brien, National Book Award–winning author
“This masterpiece is a smooth, absorbing narrative
studded with bright particulars. If God is in the details, this book is
divine.” —Edmund White, National Book Critics Circle Award–winning author
“Salter plunges into
the capricious world of book publishing…Think Mad Men with more tweed…The sentence-to-sentence
craftsmanship is stunning, and Salter can still write a perfect love scene.” —Entertainment Weekly
“Highly decorated literary hero James Salter
burnishes his reputation with All That Is.” —Vanity Fair
“Salter is one of the most celebrated living
American writers, and after a seven-year hiatus he returns with possibly his
best work yet.” —Marie Claire
“The everyday may be one of the hardest things to write about…To
indelibly record the trivial and the portentous with the same ravenous
affection, thereby persuading us that there may be no difference between
the two when assaying the worth of a life or divining its mystery—that is a crowning achievement and it’s Salter’s to claim.” —New York Times Book Review
“[Salter] is a master of the sentence so vivid
[that] it stuns. His sweeping new All That Is will refresh the
canon of one of America’s best living writers.” —Vogue
“In All That
Is, the sense of time passing is ever-present. It’s a panoramic book, an
intimate epic that spans seven decades in the life of Philip Bowman…All That
Is abounds with Salter’s signature vivid imagery…And once again, there
are unabashedly erotic scenes that border on the operatic—passages that may
come as an outright shock to some.” —Village Voice
“The best novel [I’ve]
read in a long time…All That Is is Salter’s version of a
contemporary American War and Peace, with the war, World War II, in
this instance, coming first…Reading and re-reading all this, I found
myself in a state that Salter’s work—as with the finest writers we
know—often induces. You breathe deeply and your pulse races. The sentences,
the scenes, the life, the life.” —NPR’s All Things Considered
“[A] sweeping and lovely book steeped in the high drama of
romance. All That Is follows Philip Bowman from his service in
World War II through a career as a book editor in a bygone New York. There is
no plot in a conventional sense, but in another way it has the most resonant
plot of all: the unspooling of a life. The book reads like a highly intimate
biography in which the search for romance—and sex—plays a starring role. Some of
Bowman’s relationships come to brutal ends, but always they begin with
seduction, and Salter never stints on bedroom scenes…Salter still has the
muscular authority and unembarrassed romanticism that can make a man sweat.” —GQ
“In [Salter’s] care,
the dust of the mundane is wiped away. Events resonate. Descriptions sparkle.
Salter’s mastery is such that from the affecting and effective early
scenes of protagonist Philip Bowman’s experiences off Okinawa during World War
II, through all the twists and turns of a life played out in a rapidly changing
America, nothing about this book disappoints…As absorbing as the brief chapters
on war are, the author’s scenes of seduction are equally realistic and
memorable…In this book, he has rubbed words to a high sheen indeed.” —New York Journal of Books
“Exquisite. In widely
admired novels, Salter’s great subject has been the often highly
charged relations between men and women. His new novel, All That Is,
revisits that subject in a mature, unsentimental story of one man’s restless
search for love…The
connective tissue of the story is the series of romantic entanglements into
which Bowman slips almost haphazardly. His relationships flourish and
fade in a variety of sharply observed settings. Whether his setting is the
Virginia horse country, a stylish dinner party in London, or a Seville café,
Salter writes with authority. And in painting those scenes, he captures the
angst of the privileged classes who seem to have all anyone could desire and
yet long for something that lies just out of reach. Salter has long been lauded
for his effortlessly beautiful prose and his deft characterization. Those
talents are undiminished.” —MinneapolisStar Tribune
“Striking…seamless…beautifully
done. The experience of reading [All That Is] is akin to the panoramic
view of flying, when aloft and moving fast. That is Salter’s point…we
drift through life, this novel suggests, without ever really getting to know
those around us.” —MilwaukeeJournal Sentinel
“All
That Is contains a brilliant indictment of love, even as it revels in
its sensual transports…It is perhaps not an accident that Salter would publish
this very beautiful book at the age of eighty-eight. He senses the end in
beginnings, applies the acquired wisdom of years and the terrifying
perspective of accumulated experiences to the ordinary goings on the heart…It
is this sense of being outside of one’s own life, one’s own loves, of
experiencing or remembering an entire marriage or relationship as ‘things
glimpsed from a train’ that gives Salter’s work both its depth and its
difficulty, its alarming insight and its grace.” —Slate
“A masterpiece…a commanding, sensual tour de
force…I have learned from everything James Salter has written. In [him] I
discovered not only an exquisite writer but a manner of living.” —Departures magazine
“In an era characterized by sex writing that defaults to
irony and comic dysfunction, Salter restores that erotic experience to a kind
of exalted, tantric level throughout his books (including this new one) that is
simply hot…All That Is [is] the sweeping story of a book editor’s
experiences in love and war in the 1940s…The title strikes me as a
kind of summational claim for the adequacy or the fullness of life as it’s
lived, as opposed to another world or some metaphysical longing or longing for
elsewhere.” —Interview
“Joe Barrett is perfectly cast, with the warm, slightly
graveled voice of a man who, like Salter’s Philip Bowman, has been
around the block a few times. His performance is flawless…The production is
equally polished…Pure listening pleasure. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.” —AudioFile
“Achingly real…Salter renders
the first blushes of Bowman’s loves exquisitely—their giddiness, occasional
illicitness, eroticism—and his bewilderment after the relationships fail…Salter
punctuates his elegant prose with sharp, erotic punches.” —Publishers Weekly
“With the ever-changing panorama of New York City and New York publishing
as background, Salter addresses time, love, and the mystery and wonder
of life itself.” —Library Journal
James Salter (1925–2015) was the author of numerous books, including the novels Solo Faces, Light Years, A Sport and a Pastime, The Arm of Flesh (revised as
Cassada), and The Hunters; the memoirs Gods of Tin and Burning the Days; the collections Dusk, and Other Stories, which won the 1989 PEN/Faulkner Award, and
Last Night. He was the recipient of the Rea Award for the Short Story and the PEN/Malamud Award. Life Is Meals: A Food Lover’s Book of Days, was written with his wife, Kay Salter.
Titles by Author
Details
Details
Format:
CD
Format:
Library CD
Format:
MP3 CD
Format:
Playaway
Available Formats :
CD, Library CD, MP3 CD, Playaway
Category:
Fiction
Publisher:
Blackstone Publishing
Publisher:
Blackstone Publishing
Publisher:
Blackstone Publishing
Publisher:
Blackstone Publishing
CDs:
8
CDs:
8
CDs:
1
CDs:
1
Runtime:
10.14
ISBN:
9781482926231
ISBN:
9781482926217
ISBN:
9781482926224
ISBN:
9781482933185
Audience:
Adult
Language:
English
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