Anna Lyndsey, Girl in the Dark, book review

Anna Lyndsey had a normal life: job, friends, casual boyfriend. But she began to suffer a rare skin disease that made her extremely sensitive to light. Her condition became so severe she had to retreat into a blacked-out bedroom, listening to audiobooks to pass the time. This unusual, moving memoir is artfully constructed, interleaving an account of Lyndsey’s domestic shadow-world with recollections of her former life, awash in remembered sunlight. The prose frequently sparkles, as when Lyndsey describes the impact of visitors: “[Other] people remind me of my true shape, the particular bent of my mind, the curve of my wit; that I have substance, though I move wraithlike through the shadows.”