By Such a Parting Light: A Novel

by Barbara Lalla

This narrative sets out to retrieve lives under lock-down. The novel puts forward the story of a story - one never told before and too vast for completion in a lifetime, but one its frail but fiery narrator finds herself obligated to tell. Mesmerized by the task of wording the unspeakable, Aria discovers she has many tales to unfold but even more to suppress. In various ways this is a story of Caribbean writing – humorous, cantankerous, poignant.


By Such a Parting Light also personalizes local and international violence and terror by bringing it all home to a small island in the region where an elderly woman explores proliferating dimensions of loss. At the same time, this story of marriage and family questions widely accepted understandings of civilization by examining the value a culture sets on the youngest and oldest lives in the community. The tale also, directly, addresses issues of identity. Aria writes herself into being, while she attempts to retrieve those loved and lost by assembling fragments of testimony from speakers of varying reliability.

426 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 5, 2024