Review: The Light Years

Chris Rush began doing drugs at the age of 12 when his sister’s friend gave him acid. This began his long embrace of the American counterculture of the 1960s and ’70s, which Rush recalls in his poignant memoir The Light Years.

The son of a wealthy, Roman Catholic New Jersey couple, Rush was prone as a boy to running through his neighborhood in a pink satin cape. He was eventually ostracized from his family because of his father’s hostile attitude toward Rush’s behaviour and mannerisms.

Rush spent time in a series of boarding schools and then fled out west for a number of risky adventures, eventually landing in the Arizona wilderness. During this time he better came to understand his own sexuality as a young gay man. His parents were largely indifferent to his activities while he was away. They were always more focused on their own lives and troubled marriage.

Rush, a renowned artist whose work appears in many museum collections, has written a masterful coming of age story. The Light Years (digital galley, Farrar, Straus and Giroux) paints a vivid picture of a young man searching for his place in the world. Rush shows remarkable grace in recalling a trying adolescence that would have broken many individuals.