Eight White Nights: A Novel [Audiobook, MP3 Audio, Unabridged] [MP3 CD]

Author Andre Aciman's intense analysis of a budding romance between two New Yorkers in their late twenties reveals every conversation, every thought, every re-thought, every imagined slight, every regret about lost opportunities, and every romantic question in the lives of these two characters as they test the waters for a new relationship. An unnamed narrator accustomed to the good life (and, apparently, with no need to work), meets Clara Brunschvicg at a posh Christmas party on the Upper West Side. Clara meets the speaker behind the Christmas tree, and introduces herself with the words, "I am Clara."

As the evening progresses, the reader watches the interactions of the speaker and Clara--the oneupsmanship, the "gotcha moments," the arch smart-aleckyness of two educated people trying to impress each other with how bright and "with it" they are. Literary references fall from their lips with ease--Homer, poet Henry Vaughan, and Dostoevsky appear in their early conversations. They even invent their own "cute" vocabulary as they chat: "Pandangst" for pandemic anxiety, "Shukoffs" for people they want to avoid at the party, "VishnukrishnuVindalu" for sexuality, "the rose garden" for love. They discover, not surprisingly, that they are both fans of the art films of experimental French filmmaker Eric Rohmer, who features articulate young people in new romances which play havoc with their psyches.

By the time the speaker leaves the Christmas Eve party, he is fantasizing about a future with Clara and has made plans to meet her at a Rohmer film the next night. In the meantime, he analyzes and overanalyzes every moment of their meeting and their conversations, dithering constantly about the impression he may have made and what she may have thought.

Each of the nights between Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve is described in detail from the point of view of the speaker, and in this respect, the plot parallels Fyodor Dostoevsky's short story, "White Nights." Other motifs in the novel include the speaker's tendency to walk the city (another parallel to Dostoevsky) and spend time in nearby Straus Park, which features a statue entitled "Memory." Not surprisingly, considering the subject matter, the author has chosen to set the story in the depths of winter.

As the relationship between the speaker and Clara develops, with all its misunderstandings, real and imagined, the novel's intense and heady prose conjures up vibrant images, and the dialogue, both real and imagined, is full of suggestive meanings. The sophisticated structure rewards careful reading, and the novel's style ranks with the finest of literary fiction. Unfortunately, however, the two main characters are not likable--he dithers and quakes and can't decide, while she manipulates and plays mind games--and some readers will not want to bother to find out what happens to these people--or worse, will not care. Mary Whipple

Eight White Nights: A Novel Aciman's novel is an in-depth analysis of a romance involving, it would seem, two New York intellectuals in their late twenties. It is a strange journey. In intellectualism New York fashion everything is analyzed and re-analyzed. The conversations, thoughts, movements, reactions, every tiny little gesture laid out for study. And, of course, what is thought but not said, and what could possibly have been thought an said by the main character, the unnamed narrator who sees it all, senses it all, and is as omni-potent as a combine of Freud, Marcüse and Sartre.

It starts with a Christmas party on the Upper West Side, Riverside Drive. Clara meets the speaker behind the Christmas tree, and introduces herself with the words, "I am Clara." Then follows page after page about the introduction. "I am Clara". Which to me seems very much like the ordinary, customary, relatively polite way of introducing oneself at a party. But for Aciman this seemingly is a revelation. Three words signifying a world of opportunity.

Starting from this odd night, each of the following nights are discussed and described in pretty much the same level of detail. And as the relationship develops - admittedly with some funny and amusing misunderstandings - more suggestive meanings are conjured. But nothing really happens? They don't - as one might put it - consummate the relationship. And from start to end there are lots of really deep discussions, yet even so, I can't honestly say that I ever felt I really came close to the characters - their souls, what made them tick, the inner beings.

I have noticed that the book has received a lot of rave reviews, but I really beg to differ. To my mind this is an author too interested in his own voice and what he considers wonderful sentences and expressions. Listen to this:

"From our high perch, the silver-purple city looked aerial and distant and superterrestial, a beguiling kingdom whose beaming spires rose silently through the twilit winter mist to parlay with the stars. I watched the fresh furrowed tracks on Riverside Drive, the scattered lampposts with their heads ablaze, and a bus crawling through the snow, tilting its way ppast the knoll off the 112th and Riverside before shuffling off, snow padding its lank shoulders, an empty, Stygian vessel headed toward destinations and sights unseen. I am like Clara, it said, I'll take you places you never knew."

Sure, this is sophisticated. But it is also completely vacuous! It doesn't push the novel forward - and indeed, there are a lot of paragraphs like this one. As if there really is no story to tell, at least not a story more important than the voice of the author. To me, this is grand-standing. Aciman is posing. And poseurs quickly become quite boring. Give me instead life, flesh, movement, emotion, tears and joy. Give me real people and a real story. 360 pages of posing are 340 pages too many!

Having reached page 39, I give up. I just can't get into this book at all. I started it four days ago and found it boring from the first page. I tried to keep reading, thinking it had to get better but I had such trouble maintaining my interest in the book that I began and finished three other books while still struggling to find the point in this book at which it would become interesting. It didn't. I have too many other books I want to read to waste any more time on this one. It's very rare for me to give up on a book but this one is one of those rare ones.

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