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Sign up todayGirl in the Dark
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Learn moreHaunting, lyrical, unforgettable, Girl in the Dark is a brave new memoir of a life without light.
Anna Lyndsey was young and ambitious and worked hard; she had just bought an apartment; she was falling in love. Then what started as a mild intolerance to certain kinds of artificial light developed into a severe sensitivity to all light.
Now, at the worst times, Anna is forced to spend months on end in a blacked-out room, where she loses herself in audiobooks and elaborate word games in an attempt to ward off despair. During periods of relative remission, she can venture out cautiously at dawn and dusk into a world that, from the perspective of her cloistered existence, is filled with remarkable beauty. And through it all there is Pete, her love and her rock, without whom her loneliness seems boundless.
One day Anna had an ordinary life, and then the unthinkable happened. But even impossible lives, she learns, endure. Girl in the Dark is a tale of an unimaginable fate that becomes a transcendent love story. It brings us to an extraordinary place from which we emerge to see the light and the world anew.
Anna Lyndsey is a pen name. Lyndsey worked for several years in London as a civil servant until she became ill. She now lives in Hampshire, England.
Reviews
"Absolutely stunning ... A gorgeous writer of rare honesty and wit."—Boston Globe
"Melodic, penetrating ... [Girl in the Dark] reveals the quiet, ingenious consciousness of a poet. Anna Lyndsey is both close observer and philosopher, capable of describing her world and also of pondering what it signifies."
—The New York Times Book Review
"What stays with the reader is [Lyndsey's] gutsiness, her imagination and fortitude. She doesn’t give up, but keeps looking for ways to stay sharp."
—Minneapolis Star Tribune
"[Girl in the Dark] sparkles with dark humour and wonder at the world … beautifully affecting … A tribute to the power of humanity, generosity and endurance, Girl in the Dark is incredibly powerful stuff."
—The Guardian
"An extraordinary memoir … Girl In The Dark is beautifully written. The author’s intelligence shines on every page, and her will to survive (despite those black thoughts in her dark room) is inspiring."
—Daily Mail
"Deeply affecting ... Working gingerly with the array of metaphors that emerge from darkness and offering small, telling details, Lyndsey achieves a powerful assertion of self against the eclipse of all that she used to hold dear in the realm of light."
—Publishers Weekly
"The premise of Girl in the Dark seems lifted out of a Gothic novel: a woman whose flesh is burned by light is confined to a dark box of a room. But this story is so much more than a medical mystery or a nightmarishly true tale. I read this book, a memoir that reads like an epic poem, pen in hand, feverishly underlining sentence after sentence. Yes, life is suffering, but in the end, as Anna Lyndsey so aptly puts it, ‘Words are wonderful.’ This book is a gift, a testament to the power of art as a saving grace."
—Susannah Cahalan, author of the New York Times-bestselling Brain on Fire
"In this astonishing memoir Anna Lyndsey takes us into the world of a rare and shocking illness, and we emerge awed by a shining love story. Anna writes with such honesty and grace and mischief about how her condition forces her to retreat into blackness—yet we see that this new space she so bravely creates for herself is suffused with light."
—Sonali Deraniyagala, author of Wave, winner of the PEN/Ackerly Prize and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award
"It takes courage to heal, to step outside and want to feel the full magnificence of the sun. Taking that journey with a writer of such rare gifts as Anna Lyndsey is pure pleasure."
—Christa Parravani, author of Her Expand reviews
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