Dark & Light: A Love Story

A page-turner. Story deals with race, culture, poverty & love. Well done.

I was pleasantly taken in by Mike Laser's writing style. As another reader noted, he has just enough detail to make you really care about the main characters. He has a very flowing style, the story moves quickly- yet it it is very intelligent writing and thought provoking material. Looking forward to more books by this talented writer. I highly recommend the book.

Michael Laser manages to give just the right amount of detail to make the characters realistic, without overwhelming with tons and tons of what I often consider pointless details that just make so many novels so darn looooong! And he always comes up with just the right details--that seem a little surprising but not too surprising--to deepen each character. I also like that the story doesn't have a pat "they lived happily ever after" kind of ending. The two protagonists seem like real people in a totally true-to-life situation. I really felt for them and enjoyed being in their world for a certain amount of time each day. I was sorry when the novel ended, even though it seemed to end at just the right moment.

I really enjoyed reading Michael Laser's new novel, Dark & Light. The characters grew in depth and dimension as the tale unfolded. I like the way the story was told in the voices of the protagonists, and I found the story very believable and compelling. Laser writes with restraint and intensity. I highly recommend this novel to others.

Dark & Light works like a piece of chamber music and is a great read. Most of it takes place on the Upper West Side of New York City in the mid-1990s, when some people still smoked in offices, used subway tokens, and were just beginning to use the Internet. While a relationship between a divorced, older white computer programmer and a homeless, younger African American woman at that time may sound unlikely, Michael Laser makes it convincing and compelling, intelligently touching on issues of class, race, generosity, failure, and a person's ability to change. As Edmund and Careese struggle to come to terms with their hopes for the future, their feelings about each other and the consequences of their actions before they met, Laser uses wonderfully written internal monologues to shed light on their personalities and move the action forward. Dark & Light captures the mystery, complexity and ambivalence of two very different, well-realized characters. Bravo!