Excerpt from Girl in the Dark by Anna Lyndsey, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I take my skin back to my lair. In the darkness, it regains its equilibrium.



Medical

.?.?.?The patient now reacts not only on the uncovered areas, but even through clothing,?.?.?.?resulting in severe painful reactions occurring on all areas of the body?.?.?.

DIAGNOSIS:

The working diagnosis is photosensitive seborrhoeic dermatitis. This condition certainly can cause these types of very severe reaction, these being a well-recognised though rare syndrome, which is very frequently extremely disabling as in this case because of the need to avoid even low levels of exposure to relevant light sources?.?.?.

CURRENT FUNCTIONAL CAPACITY:

This lady's light sensitivity is so severe and she is so sensitive to it (as is the case with a small group of patients whom we see with the same condition) that she is severely incapacitated because of the extent to which she has to avoid all the various sources of light, which of course are ubiquitous in any normal environment?.?.?.?In fact, during 2006 things have been so bad that for a prolonged period of many months now she has been confined to a darkened room at home and is not able to tolerate any other situation because of her skin problem?.?.?.

LIKELY PROGNOSIS:

Going on the experience with our other patients and on the literature about patients with these types of immediate reactions to light sources, the prognosis is very variable, but there certainly is a significant sub-set of patients whose problems persist in the long-term, sometimes very severely?.?.?.



Talking Books

My ears become my conduit to the world. In the darkness I listen--to thrillers, to detective novels, to romances; to family sagas, potboilers and historical novels; to ghost stories and classic fiction and chick lit; to bonkbusters and history books. I listen to good books and bad books, great books and terrible books; I do not discriminate. Steadily, hour after hour, in the darkness I consume them all.

The books I listen to are random; they depend entirely on what is in the library when my book collector is there. I note down the titles on a list, divided alphabetically, so that my book collector does not bring me books I have had before. That apart, my rate of consumption is so rapid and my need so intense that I cannot afford to be fussy. There are only two curiously contrasting prohibitions on the list: "Nothing by James Patterson or Miss Read." I can live without the former's detailed descriptions of the minutiae of serial killing; the latter's accounts of the life of a village schoolmistress achieve a mixture of cattiness and smugness that render me simultaneously irritated and comatose.

For the rest, I let my authors take me where they will.

In my life before, I read at speed, skimming over the page, extracting a broad impression, seeking out salient points with a sceptical, summarising eye. Sometimes I (whisper it) skipped descriptive passages altogether. Now I am a captive audience and must ingest every single word. I lie back and let the plot build round me slowly, brick by brick. I collaborate willingly in my own slow seduction, for what do I want from my authors but long, long-lasting release? I come to hate interruptions in the narrative, to dread the voice which says, "That is the end of this side. The story continues on the next cassette." I grab for the next tape, scrabble it out of the tight-fitting plastic surround with my fingernails, slam it into the machine and push the button down. I am a patient on morphine whose fix has been interrupted, desperate to restart the pain-dulling feed. Close up the gaps, hurry through the changes: in those small silences despair, I know, can easily come crashing back.

By way of this unprecedented, unbridled literary promiscuity, I have made some pleasant discoveries. Having zero interest in racing, I would never, in the life before, have picked up one of Dick Francis's horsey thrillers. But as companions in the dark, I find them amiably gripping. In one of them, the hero, a jockey-turned-accountant, is kidnapped and held in the dark in the back of a van for days, with only some bottled water and a bag of processed cheese for company; as my situation is somewhat better than his, I find this vaguely encouraging. The books celebrate the bloody--mindedness of the ordinary man: the hero will keep worrying away at a problem, and although he will certainly be knocked on the head, get tied up and suffer unpleasant consequences, he is never actually killed.

Excerpted from Girl in the Dark by Anna Lyndsey. Copyright © 2015 by Anna Lyndsey. Excerpted by permission of Doubleday, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.