I found Anna Lyndsey’s “Girl in the Dark” to be beautifully written. I had dreaded reading it because my book club had read several depressing novels lately. Can you picture it? (Pardon the pun.) A young woman so intensely sensitive to light she must stay in a dark room deprived of any natural or artificial light, with her only breaks at dusk and dawn?
Her brilliance is displayed by the word games she devises to keep her occupied, and they are not easy games. She struggles to focus on the outward world although she is pretty much a prisoner of the inner one.
Still, she maintains an interest in plants and flowers that she so rarely sees. Ironically, her husband, Pete, is a photographer who depends on the light and shares much with her as she struggles to keep her mind alert and her outlook positive. Their wedding is a humorous affair as it has to be postponed several times.
She found other friends similarly affected by chronic illness and gained hope from them as she hoped she also gave to them. Her memoir reads like an epic poem as she describes her different life. Her description of her wardrobe is hilarious as she protects herself from the sun’s rays. How well she describes life without light is amazing.