She has a happy job as a civil servant, has just moved into her first flat and is falling in love. Anna Lyndsey’s life is gloriously unremarkable. And then something odd happens. Her computer screen starts making her face burn. Before long, any light is like someone holding a blowtorch in front of her, and she has to retreat to a completely dark room for days, weeks and then months on end. “In my body, something was afoot,” she writes. “There had been treachery within the citadel. Quietly an alien force crept in, overwhelming the loyal defenders, taking and holding the positions of strength.”
Anyone who has experienced chronic illness will know that desperate feeling of not being able to trust your body, of racking your brain (and the internet) for reasons and potential cures. The hope, despair and guilt at the burden laid at the door of loved ones. Lyndsey prises open all these emotions with effortless, matter-of-fact clarity, without ever letting Girl in the Dark trip over into misery memoir territory.
In fact, her chronicle of a life without light somehow sparkles with dark humour and wonder at the world. Lyndsey listens to audiobooks in the dark and, though a literary kind of girl, she devours SAS thrillers. When a reiki healer comes to see her and suggests that her mind is telling her that her relationship with partner Pete only works if she is ill, she wants to “leap from the bed, put my SAS training into practice, and smash the woman in the face”.
She doesn’t, of course. But it’s little expressions like this, of how it feels when she finally goes outside again (at night-time), lets herself be soaked by a rainstorm and is “welcomed back to life”, that make this book so beautifully affecting. With the help of Pete, she somehow finds a way to live a life in the shadows, even though a setback is always around the corner.
A tribute to the power of humanity, generosity and endurance, Girl in the Dark is incredibly powerful stuff.
