By Such a Parting Light - by Barbara Lalla (Paperback)

About the Book

Novel. Barbara Lalla is Professor Emerita, Language and Literature, the University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad and Tobago. Her many publications include the novels Grounds for Tenure, Uncle Brother, Cascade, and Arch of Fire, and a number of scholarly critical works on Caribbean literature.

Book Synopsis

Disaster catapults three children into the care
of their Caribbean grandparents, before another relative, elusive and perhaps
unstable, makes a conflicting claim to guardianship. Balancing domestic
calamity against her own compulsive writing, Aria faces physical and
psychological threats, as a pandemic creeps up on the world and the country
moves into lockdown. By Such a Parting Light offers a humorous and
poignant tale of aging and of coming of age, and it takes a mischievous
approach to the multiple meanings of retirement.

A must for all readers of Caribbean and island
literature - for readers with a taste for realism that blends seamlessly into
strains of the marvelous and gothic - the novel's themes of loss and
separation, love and resilience, are universally appealing. The book personalizes local and international
violence and terror by bringing it all home to a small country in an
international context of uncontained infection and catastrophic politics. Turning
an astonished eye on developed nations from the frail shelter of a tiny island,
the tale unveils alternative notions of civilization and enlightenment.