Kelly Blewett

At this moment on the other side of the world, a girl is sitting in the dark. A rare skin disease prevents exposure to the sun, to a shining bulb, even to the benign glow of a Kindle screen. She covers up the slightest cracks of light with tin foil. What do people who pass her house on the street think of these ceaseless black-out blinds, she wonders. She doesn't find out.

She spends her evenings with her husband, who enters her box of darkness to listen to the radio and to make love. He looms large in her world, and one can feel her enthusiasm for him. Lyndsey, who before falling ill worked for the British government, finds she cannot listen to music alone because it stirs up too much despair. Her very skin is a prison. Yet, like many stories of enduring seemingly impossible circumstances, Lyndsey's poetic reflections on her life in the dark shed light on how valuable it is to be human, how beautiful it is to be alive. 

Rather than a strictly chronological account, Girl in the Dark offers short, vital essays around various themes, such as dreams, word games, hats, autonomy, rain, her mother, physics and memory. In one titled "People," she writes, "For [guests] I put on my corset of cheerfulness, a solid serviceable garment. It holds in the bulgings and oozings of emotions, and soon I find they are, temporarily, stilled." The image of the corset of cheerfulness does not quickly leave the reader. Similarly thoughtful metaphors are planted like so many bright flowers on the fertile pages.

Through Lyndsey's remarkable storytelling, through the rightness of her words, her world comes alive. The book becomes so much larger than her darkened room. I cannot recommend it warmly enough.

Brian Benson’s new memoir about the journeys we take and how they shape the people we become is not to be missed. Going Somewhere begins in South America where, as a young college graduate with a liberal arts degree, Brian decides to spend a few months backpacking. He’s stopped in his tracks by Rachel, an American making her living as a singer. He joins her band. They fall in love. And a few months later, they decide to ditch Guatemala in favor of a different adventure: biking from Wisconsin to western Oregon. He’s a lanky, six-foot-tall athlete; she’s a diminutive beauty with a plus-sized wit. They buy matching bikes, and their love seems to be in full bloom. But what happens on the trail?

Of course, a lot happens. But like other memoirs that explore the intersection of people and place, the “plot” of the narrative is a lot less interesting than Brian’s inner life: how he understands himself and his world and how that understanding shifts as he attempts to do this really cool, really hard thing.

He doesn’t shy away from vulnerability. Readers get insight into all sorts of ungracious, self-questioning thoughts. But rather than weaken the memoir, this openness strengthens it, transforming it from one young man’s story to something simultaneously more personal and more universal.

Writing this book was surely as much hard work as biking the 2,500 miles. As Brian says in the afterword, he biked many of the routes over again in an attempt to get everything just right. But I think you will agree that the work was worth it, especially for us readers. We, too, get to fall in love and go on an enormous adventure. We, too, get to think about our big, complicated world and who we want to be. We, too, are inspired to go somewhere.

Jihad, an Arabic word meaning strife or struggle, has many connotations in our culture, few of them romantic. Yet romance is at the center of Krista Bremer’s moving memoir, My Accidental Jihad, though struggle is a key element as well.

One day while jogging in North Carolina, Krista, a graduate student, met an older Libyan man, Ismail. He was not exactly the person she’d envisioned as Prince Charming. He was graying of hair and yellow of teeth, not to mention that he struck Krista as utterly foreign, completely other. But when she was with him, she felt herself relax, as though she were settling into a deep pool of water. She felt at home. And then, to paraphrase Charlotte Brontë: Reader, she married him.

The memoir tells the story of their marriage in unrelenting candor and gorgeous prose. Intimacy with Ismail forces Krista to evaluate her American life with a critical eye. Do Americans really need so much stuff? She compares Ismail’s gentle and loving care of his few things with the habits of a previous boyfriend, who left piles of designer clothes littered across the floor. Krista is deeply glad to be with Ismail. But does he really have to use a 15-year-old coffee maker? Holidays are also difficult. For Krista, Ramadan is a mystery. She doesn’t like the way it changes her husband, who gets testy while fasting. She finds it hard to support him, to lay a single date and a glass of water neatly on the table for him to break his fast at sundown. Her reservations about Ramadan, though, pale next to his confusion about Christmas. Seeing Christmas through Ismail’s eyes, Krista simultaneously realizes how silly the holiday rituals are, and how terribly attached she is to them.

Years after their rushed nuptials, the pair hosts a belated, extravagant celebration of their love. It’s a dramatic event, full of grand gestures such as a friend who went to great lengths to play a piano outside. The next day, Ismail and Krista return to the site of the party to clean up. As she wipes a stained table, Krista reflects, “Ours will always be a sticky marriage.”

The brilliance of this book is that the author never lets herself or her husband off the hook. Instead, she presents an honest—and at times painful—portrayal of a beautiful union.

This article was originally published in the May 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

At first, Carol Wall’s memoir, Mr. Owita’s Guide to Gardening, sounds like a book you might have read before: An unlikely friendship develops between two people who appear to have nothing in common. Giles Owita is an immigrant from Kenya who works part-time as a gardener. Wall is a high school English teacher and writer whose work has graced the pages of magazines like Southern Living. But things are not as they seem. In time, Wall will regard Owita as the greatest professor she has ever had. And you will be convinced she is right.

Their relationship begins predictably. Wall asks Owita to help her reclaim her lawn, an eyesore that is becoming the worst looking yard on the block. He helps her plant a few beds, tend to the grass and (memorably) prune a tree. But soon the relationship veers off script. We see some of the depth that is to come in a letter Owita sends to Wall shortly after viewing her lawn. “I took the liberty of stopping by your compound today, even though your vehicle was not in the driveway. . . . You have a lovely yard. Of particular beauty are the azaleas.” His eloquence impresses the English teacher in Wall, who muses, “Compound. It sounded elegant. Exotic.” It is the beginning of a rich conversation.

Despite their differences in race and background, both Owita and Wall carry family and health burdens that will be lightened by sharing them. Through their friendship, both truly help each other—in real tangible ways that change each other and their community.

I couldn’t put this book down. I found myself liking the principal characters from the opening pages, and my affection for them never wavered. If you enjoy inspirational memoirs or gardening books (or both), this moving account of a life-changing friendship is for you.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Carol Wall for Mister Owita's Guide to Gardening.