"A heart-tearing, character-driven page-turner about a troubled family, losing and finding one’s way, and the cycle of life."
Utterly engaging, Zoe Coyle’s Where the Light Gets In debut follows the tumultuous story of a young woman haunted by childhood tragedy, the cold cruelty of her father, and the agonising request of her dying mother. Exploring the extremes of grief and guilt, and how might we turn to extreme measures in our attempt to find peace, it’s also a story of love, friendship and unbreakable bonds.
As Delphi lands her ideal job assisting an esteemed artist in London, her dying mother tells her its time – her terminal degenerative brain disease has reached the point that she’s ready to die, and she wants Delphi to be there when she self-euthanises.
After making the long journey to Tasmania, the euthanasia goes wrong - Delphi’s mother survives, and the police suspect she was involved. As a result, her mother tells her to return to London, leaving her estranged brother to take up the mantle.
Reeling from the experience, and knowing it’s only a matter of time before her mother dies, Delphi flounders in no man’s land, though her wonderful godfather and strangers offer solace, such as the man in a Hampstead Heath pub who sagely tells her that “grief can build a cathedral inside us. A place of immense wisdom and empathy, of perspective and gratitude…Don’t be afraid. Death is inevitable. It’s the “Great Return”. We are all just walking each other home.”
This highly readable novel is peppered with such moments of calm kindness as Delphi receives more unexpected news and further upends her life, before rebirth and healing eventually come.
| Primary Genre | General Fiction |
| Other Genres: | |
| Recommendations: |
For anyone who has ever loved and lost, and dared to rise again. Delphi Hoffman, a wild child living in London, is finally getting her life together with a new love affair and the offer of a coveted job – until she receives the phone call she hoped would never arrive.
‘It’s time.’
Her mother Vivian’s terminal illness has reached its tipping point and she summons Delphi to Australia to help her to euthanise. Unable to deny her mother’s suffering, or her promise to her of a good death, Delphi reluctantly returns to her mother for the last time. This is a story of the ties of family that enmesh in love and death, and the journey back to self in its aftermath. As Delphi is blown onto the wasteland of grief and shame, she has to discover where her mother’s life ends and she begins amid the atomic fallout her actions have unleashed.
Incandescent and extraordinary, Where the Light Gets In heralds the arrival of a powerful new voice in Australian fiction.
Where the Light Gets In features in the following genres: General Fiction, Debut Books of the Month, Debuts, Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Fiction, Recommendations
Where the Light Gets In is available in Ebook, Paperback
Where the Light Gets In was written by Zoe Coyle and published by Ultimo Press
Where the Light Gets In has 352 pages
£8.09
