A novel that concerns adultery between a married Jewish architect and an almost-divorced poet--in Berkeley, no less--had better have a sense of humor about its subject. Fortunately, The Physics of Sunset does. Yes, Jane Vandenburgh populates her tale with characters named Alec and Gina and Carlo and Veronique; yes, they all have glamorous occupations such as poet and painter and experimental musician; and, yes, they dine at Chez Pannisse. But into the mix, the author stirs a bracing dollop of irony and not a little satire. Take, for example, this commentary on Berkeley life: What one did in order to demonstrate that you were a successful Berkeley couple, Anna noticed, was manage to stay together long enough to get the family's portrait done by Elizabeth Smythe and therefore have irrefutable evidence. And then there are the chapter titles--spiky little headings, such as "Technically Daylight" or "Suicide Haiku" or "Schmutz," that add a frisson of anticipation of what is to follow. What does follow is the history of two marriages, and the point where they intersect. Architect Alec Baxter and his wife, Gina, have entered a lull in their relationship; Gina, an artist, has become so involved in her latest venture, Video Family, that "her love for this project--she called it 'Bungalow'--was so intense, her love for her own family paled by comparison." Though Alec is proud of his wife and of her dedication, he is also beginning to think "vaguely of other women." Enter poet Anna Shay, a neighbor whose own marriage to her musician husband, Charlie, is on the rocks. Over a period of years, Alec and Anna--both East Coast transplants to Berkeley--are drawn to each other and finally into an affair that threatens to shatter the careful balance each has achieved in life. Though The Physics of Sunset is not a particularly long book, Vandenburgh doesn't rush Anna and Alec--or the reader--into this affair. Instead she carefully lays the groundwork, introducing us to her protagonists' pasts, to their friends and passions and preoccupations, before finally allowing them to indulge in some very kinky sexual adventuring. Indeed, one could describe this book as an erotic novel for intellectuals, for in between the graphic love scenes are meditations on subjects as diverse as physics, architecture, and ethnography. In her second novel, Jane Vandenburgh has taken an old subject and given it a uniquely imagined new twist. --Alix Wilber


From Publishers Weekly
Since her highly praised first novel, Failure to Zigzag, Vandenburgh has kept readers waiting a decade for this second effort. A smart, witty, sadly ironic novel about neighbors in Berkeley who become lovers, this is an even more elegantly crafted and perceptive work. Rich with intelligence and feeling, it explores (and often satirizes) such themes as women's search for self-realization, the pretentiousness of the California lifestyle, the nature of marriage; there are also meaningful reflections on the principles of architecture and the theories of physics. Vandenburgh introduces several upper-middle-class couples who live in a canyon in the hills, weaving a textured skein of West Coast domestic life before she focuses on the man and woman in this circle who will eventually recognize each other as fated lovers. Despite his assimilated name, successful architect Alec Baxter thinks in the Yiddish phrases of his Queens boyhood and suffers from the echt-Jewish fears, guilt and panic about the direction of his life. He is drawn to reticent, melancholy poet Anna Bell-Shays years before her divorce; his own emotional estrangement from his cold, self-absorbed artist wife brings them together in irresistible passion. Despite his emotional Jewish sensibility and her WASP reserve, their intellectual interests coalesce around the field of physics, a theme that Vandenburgh develops with subtle and convincing skill. Coming after her cool dissection of several couples' marriages and her wickedly acerbic portraits of the cultural scene, Vandenburgh's depiction, in the last third of the novel, of Anna and Alec's affair is searing and poignant. Intensely erotic, its transports are tinged with painAphysical and emotionalAand the knowledge of finality. In capturing a particular culture in the fragile environment of social and natural disorder (the 1989 earthquake and the 1991 wildfire occur during this time), Vandenburgh has also created a memorable portrait of fulfilled love and bereavement at its loss. Her compassion infuses this story with insight and grace. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Review
"Jane Vandenburgh simply astounds me. With The Physics of Sunset she once again proves herself to be one of our purest writers. Each of the many layers of this new novel exudes a quirky brilliance, lots of soul,
and acerbic humor, with great tenderness shining from underneath it all."
--Anne Lamott

"Jane Vandenburgh is a seer: it is the multiple dimensions of life that draw her keen, original eye. The Physics of Sunset is a gorgeous poem to human and physical observation. Reading it is like being given the gift of second sight."
--John Burnham Schwartz

"The sex alone makes the pages tremble, but there is much more, brilliantly told. She is the Colette and Jean Rhys of our own Cote d'Azur."        
--James Salter

"Jane Vandenburgh's wit, which is the very being of her intelligence and her style, and is sharp enough to be deadly, is yet never dissociated from compassion, because it is never dissociated from imagination. In
this elegant book, a season of freedom and joy--an escape into secrecy from the politics of liberation by two people bound for a time to one another--leads to suffering that is profound and clarifying."
--Wendell Berry

FROM THE PUBLISHER

When "an active grief suddenly yawns open for no good reason in the middle of her life," Anna Bell-Shay finds herself inexorably drawn to Alec Baxter, a celebrated architect. Both are transplanted Easterners in a form of exile in Berkeley, an enclave they find something less than paradise. Alec - intense, intellectual, Jewish, an admirer of Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis I. Kahn - advocates the beauty of orderly buildings as ardently as he upholds the structure of his marriage. Anna is a poet, self-effacing and calm, devoted to the elegance of language. Against a backdrop of California's signature disasters - earthquakes, floods, urban wildfire - Alec and Anna explore an unexpected, extramarital physical passion with a recklessness that threatens the balance of their carefully constructed lives.

FROM THE CRITICS

Newsday

Unflinching...humane, earthy, and intensely erotic...Vandenburgh accurately captures just how close people can be, yet almost chillingly distant at the same time . . . the novel admirably grapples with the idea that doomed passion can have a place in our lives.

Anne Lamott

Each of the many layers of this new novel exudes a quirky brilliance, lots of soul and acerbic humor, with great tenderness shining underneath it all.

Wendell Berry

In this elegant book, a season of freedom and joy￯﾿ﾽan escape into secrecy from the politics of liberation by two people bound for a time to one another￯﾿ﾽleads to suffering that is profound and clarifying.

James Salter

The sex alone makes the pages tremble, but there is much more, brilliantly told. She is the Colette and Jean Rhys of our own C￯﾿ﾽte d'Azur.

John Burnham Schwartz