This stunningly beautiful, original memoir is driven by a search for the divine ... funny and harrowing and deeply tender. As Rush recounts his adolescence, which becomes increasingly terrifying, it’s impossible not to worry about how badly things might turn out ... Although the book’s arc bends toward Rush’s eventual sobriety, this doesn’t read like a typical recovery memoir. His descriptions of his own drug use are unapologetic and even affectionate. And he never soft-pedals how difficult life becomes after he goes straight ... both a coming-of-age book and an account of an artist’s development.
Rush’s incisive humor livens up the bleak narrative, and he captures the eccentricities and quirks of the many people he encountered as a teen...Most notably, his characterization of his parents is evenhanded and sympathetic, humanizing figures that initially appear neglectful and larger than life ... The memoir speeds by in a mesmerizing blur...the narrative moves at a rapid pace, and the memoir hardly feels close to four hundred pages. The dialogue is consistently quick-witted and sharp, the descriptions evocative and surreal. Rush has a real talent for fully rendering dynamic personalities and extraordinary landscapes ... The book, while marketed as a straight forward memoir, is an expertly crafted, elevated piece of writing.The narrative feels artfully arranged and experimental in form. Rush has written an expansive life narrative, full of brilliant observations, and it’s hard to believe that this is only his first book. Signaling the debut of a talented writer, The Light Years sketches an unforgettable portrait of a turbulent time.
... mesmerizing ... Rush remembers his acid trips with poetic clarity ... For his reader, this redeeming affirmation [of life] comes as both revelation and relief.
...happily, this busy, headlong narrative is not forced by its author; the propulsion driving it is one into which he seems pulled, drawn by whatever it was that engineered the collective crest-then-crash course of idealistic seekers and misfits between 1967 and 1976. Drugs, for one thing ... Remarkably, his beatific innocence remains intact, as does the lightheartedness of the narration. If The Light Years can seem haphazard or uncurated, scribbling hitchhiking routes back and forth across the map, what it sacrifices in reflection on Chris’s experience it makes up for in reflection of the culture ... what’s fresh and interesting about The Light Years is its account of gay survivalism ... The rare thing the book offers is a nearly documentary collection of gay and genderqueer kids, and their situations, in the early 1970s.
Most people stretch to find enough material to fill a memoir; not visual artist Chris Rush, who only reaches his early 20s by the end of The Light Years — another blond Alice tumbling headlong into the kaleidoscopic wonderland of American counterculture in the 1960s and ’70s ... There’s a lot of darkness in Light, but Rush is a fantastically vivid writer, whether he’s remembering a New Jersey of 'meatballs and Windex and hairspray' or the dappled, dangerous beauty of Northern California, where 'rock stars lurked like lemurs in the trees.'
While Rush’s story is incredibly interesting and thought-provoking on its own, his writing style lends an honest and mind-bending quality. Rush recounts the highs and lows with a clarity that refuses to glorify or ask for pity. He simply presents his adolescence for what it was: a time of infinite magic and joy as well as one plagued by addiction and isolation ... Although the memoir takes the reader to some dark moments in Rush’s life, overall it serves as a recollection of the wonder of his youth ... all throughout this story is Rush’s large-hearted compassion for the friends he made along the way ... It’s difficult to come away from The Light Years without an appreciation for the beauty Rush finds in a seemingly harsh world. Seeing through his perspective could potentially leave readers changed for the better.
The challenge for Rush is compelling us to follow the events of that era that feel like familiar standards–the sacrament of dropping acid the first time, for example, is something we feel we know as well as our own memories, even if we’ve never done it. But he breaks through when he reveals that both his drug-fueled adventures and his relationship with his sexuality are really about the way he left the church but never abandoned his search for an experience of the divine that might replace it. This other story, filled with sentences lit from the inside like his paintings, allows Rush to 'make it new'–any artist’s imperative–in telling us the story of his life.
Rush is brutally honest about his experiences with his family, sexuality, and drugs. In this mix of morality tale and Thoreauvian meditation on the American landscape, Rush brings the conspiracy-laden world of the early 1970s counterculture vividly back to life; each page provides a fascinating window onto not only a tumultuous period of his life but also, more broadly, the American experience. This is a confessional and thoughtful memoir of the highest order.
...a dazzling debut memoir ... In sparkling, lucid prose that perfectly captures the joy, depression, anger, and wonder that characterized his adventures, the author recounts the seemingly endless hills and valleys of his unique tale ... the author refreshingly avoids tying his story up with a pretty bow, and readers will wish for more from this talented writer. A captivating, psychedelically charged coming-of-age memoir.
...[a] vibrant memoir ... Rush’s storytelling shines as he travels across the country and back again, searching for truth, love, UFOs in New Mexico, peace, something that feels like God, and a place to call home. This is a mesmerizing record of his journey through adolescence.
