Difficult Light

This book has been around for over 10 years and has lots of reviews and high ratings, and I can see why. It's quite emotional at times, but includes some humor. It's relatively short and uses language well. Recommended.

Thanks very much for the review copy!!

Beautiful. Memories of an elderly painter David who is gradually losing his sight. The story is a mix of past and present events. It is fascinating how David finds beauty in small things in nature and the world around him. He finds impressions worth painting all around him. Because his vision is deteriorating, he doesn't paint anymore, but he starts to write his memories of a deceased son and wife. Their happy and sad moments together.

Even now, at old age, when he can't paint anymore, painting remains his true passion. »... with oils and pigments, I sometimes thought I touched infinity.«

Thanks for the opportunity to read it.

This is a powerful novella, and make no mistake. Narrated by a Colombian artist, who tells us he's writing it out in large letters in hand-made ink, due to his failing eyesight, it covers his life with his wife and children, but concentrates on one turning point when the family were living in New York City. There, the household is full of people finding it unable to work, eat properly, converse, sleep – and that's because their disabled son is being driven out of state by one of his brothers, en route to a most singular appointment.

You can read other reviews or the blurb itself to find out what, but I will repeat that word 'bleak'. Yet this is not fully despairing – there are just as many birds in flight as instances of memento mori, and as much colour as grimness. It will affect some people too much, however, so buyer beware. And anyway, what I found to the detriment of the narrative was not its inherently miserable side, neither was it (or not fully, anyway) the very random-seeming way we switched timeline and focus from yore to then to now and back. No, it was the fact that the writing seemed quite passive, and perhaps too reflective as opposed to action-led. And I don't think some people will like the approach that makes it so much about our patriarch – yes it's his memoir, but it is too much about him. "I married Sara when we were both twenty-six years old" – how nice of you, now what did she do – or was this not a two-way transaction?

Those quibbles aside, if you can face the subject matter, and keep the concentration needed to work out which paragraph is set when, you could well find a new favourite. A favourite only for the times when you can face a certain lack of cheer, mind. A strong four stars.

A meditation on and exploration of grief and loss, this is a short but powerful account of a father and painter trying to make sense of his pain through his art. Quiet, reflective and understated, I found it a moving and convincing insight into how a tragedy impacts a family.