Eight White Nights Book

Aciman is a Proust scholar so it's not surprising that this work is so Proustian: a narrative of the human experience that occurs through slow accumulation of thoughts, sensory information and psychological awakenings. I read somewhere (maybe in an interview) that Aciman considers this his favorite book. If you've read Proust simply to enjoy the journey of meanders, then you'll enjoy this read. If you've read Dostoyevsky's White Nights, you'll appreciate a similar love story and inner restlessness of character. And if you've read any of Aciman's works, well you'd simply enjoy the craftsmanship that is his style. Simply put, don't read this if what you seek is conventional story structure. Although I wanted another ending, this is my fourth Aciman read and, as always, I was stunned by how he uses language to illuminate human nature, to showcase the loneliness of a man who wanders the city remembering his father and thinking constantly about a woman he's just met.



"Perhaps it was the state of a woman whose beauty could easily overwhelm you, but then, rather than withdraw after achieving its effect, simply lingered on your face and never let go till it read every good or bad thought it knew it would find and had probably placed there, straining the conversation, promising intimacy before its time, demanding intimacy as one demands surrender, breaking through the lines of casual conversation long before preliminary acts of friendship had been put in place, daring you to admit what she'd known all along: that you were easily flustered in her presence, that she was right, all men are ultimately more uneasy with desire than the women they desire."

Hello New York City: Strauss Park, 105th Street. Hello love and anxiety and fear and pain and restlessness all wrapped in a bow that secures two bottles of champagne for a new year's toast and a trip to see Eric Rohmer's films. Aciman had to be in love when writing this. In fact I couldn't help remembering pieces of Alibis: Essays on Elsewhere as I read this. This is a story of a man and woman who get to know each other over the course of eight white nights. It embraces the angst of not knowing when or if you're in love and, better yet, if the other person feels the same. The book itself is in eight sections. The story occurs in dialogue and in stream. You either read yourself (or your Ex) in these elongated thoughts, or you try to clear a path free of convolutions. Maybe both. You read and you're a therapist. You read and you're a participant. You read and you're disoriented. You read this and you want to find a city whose maze you know how to maneuver because it is your city, the city you knew once you knew love, the city that holds those kind of memories you want to relive.