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The Discovery of Light by J.P. Smith
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The Discovery of Light

$14.99

Narrator Robin Bloodworth
Length 7 hours 16 minutes
Language English
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Divorced American academic David Reid teaches English by day and spends his free time writing mystery novels that nobody reads. In London he meets his new editor, Kate. Blonde and beautiful, she is also mysterious and aloof—and soon captivates David.

The feeling seems mutual and the two are soon wed, but Kate quickly spirals into a deep sadness. In less than two years, she leaves David and heads to New York City. Just as the shock of her absence sets in, David receives a call announcing Kate’s instant death under a subway train.

Was Kate trying to return to David when she was killed? Was it an accident? A suicide? A murder? The more David learns, the less he wants to know—especially when he discovers Kate had been having an affair with French novelist Marc Rougemont, whose work she was allegedly translating.

As David searches for the truth about his wife, he becomes fixated on two paintings of women by Dutch master Johannes Vermeer, for whom David and Kate shared a passion that bordered on obsession. Was his wife as unknowable as the subjects of these cryptic, beautifully rendered portraits?

J.P. Smith began his writing career in London, where he published his first novel, The Man from Marseille. His other novels include Body and Soul, The Blue Hour, Breathless, and Airtight, which will be published in Fall 2012. His original screenplay, Chasing Daylight, was a quarterfinalist for the Nicholl Fellowships, and his The Memory Thief is currently out to producers. Smith writes regularly for The Nervous Breakdown and has been a keynote speaker at the Seacoast Literary Conference as well as a speaker and panelist at the Writing Today literary conference. Born in New York City and raised five minutes from the Bronx, he currently lives in Beverly Cove, Massachusetts.

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Reviews

The Discovery of Light, J.P. Smith’s fourth novel, may be his most ambitious work so far. Smith characteristically provides a compelling, suspenseful plot featuring attempted murder, deception, suicide and adultery. But he adds another dimension in his new book: a counterplot about the nature of art and the creative spirit that is a homage to painter Jan Vermeer…But writing a compelling, intricately woven novel of suspense and human relations does not suffice for Smith—he takes this a step further. ‘None of us deserves the banality of real life,’ he concludes on the last page. ‘For us there is only the richness of art.’” The Boston Globe

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