Girl in the Dark

Anna Lyndsey suffers from extreme sensitivity to light. She is forced to spend her life in darkness. This is her story.'An astonishing memoir' Sonali Deraniyagala, author of Wave'The miracle is not that she has written about the experience, although that would be remarkable enough … What is so surprising is that this is a tremendous book, beautifully written and full of hard-won hope and unexpected humour. It isn’t a misery memoir, nor a self-help guide. It’s a little masterpiece' Mail on Sunday‘Oh, what can I not do, in my dreams. In my dreams I travel on trains and climb mountains, I play concerts and swim rivers, I carry important documents on vital missions, I attend meetings which become song-and-dance routines. My body lies boxed in darkness, but beneath my closed eyelids there is colour, sound and movement, in glorious contrast to the day; mad movies projected nightly in the private theatre of my skull.’ Anna Lyndsey was living a normal life. She enjoyed her job; she was ambitious; she was falling in love. Then the unthinkable happened.It began with a burning sensation on her face when she was exposed to computer screens and fluorescent lighting. Then the burning spread and the problematic light sources proliferated. Now her extreme sensitivity to light in all forms means she must spend much of her life in total darkness. During the best times, she can venture cautiously outside at dusk and dawn, avoiding high-strength streetlamps. During the worst, she must spend months in a darkened room, listening to audiobooks, inventing word-games and fighting to keep despair at bay. Told with great beauty, humour and honesty, Girl in the Dark is the astonishing and uplifting account of Anna’s descent into the depths of her extraordinary illness. It is the story of how, through her determination to make her impossible life possible and with the love of those around her, she has managed to find light in even the darkest of places.

Bizarre and gripping … It’s honesty, bravery and touches of black comedy will be a help to anyone suffering from a chronic illness, as well as to those who – at least for now – are spared. This book about darkness shines with lucid writing and flashes of bold imagination, The miracle is not that she has written about the experience, although that would be remarkable enough … What is so surprising is that this is a tremendous book, beautifully written and full of hard-won hope and unexpected humour. It isn’t a misery memoir, nor a self-help guide. It’s a little masterpiece, Melodic, penetrating ... [Girl in the Dark] reveals the quiet, ingenious consciousness of a poet, An extraordinary memoir of horror, endurance, resourcefulness and despair … 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, 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

Anna Lyndsey worked for several years in London as a civil servant until she became ill. She now lives with her husband in Hampshire. Anna is writing under a pen name.