Waldrop’s Light While There Is Light: An American History treats his family’s errant religiosity, their constant seeking and sputtering, with the care of one unwrapping a delicate parcel ... Unlike anything I’ve ever read ... Where the book should crumble into nihilism, it builds instead to a plainspoken mercy.
The book is not a happy one, but neither is it unremittingly sad ... Quiet and understated, its tone even-keeled, unhurried and never judgmental. The lasting moments are the ones that seem at first the least significant ... If this novel has any magic – and many readers will find it does – it is from these scenes which another author might never have included, let alone remembered.
Beguiling, lovely, unclassifiable ... Both comic and violent ... There is a strangely disjointed aspect to Waldrop’s memories, and, for all the humor of his recollections, a powerful afterglow of melancholy, of loss, runs throughout ... In this strange little gem, Waldrop captures that shining light and the shadows it illuminates with a powerful and understated magnificence.
