"Difficult Light is a story of living while waiting for inevitable loss to occur . . . Rosenberg’s translation is . . . notable for the lucid, compassionate tone it strikes in capturing the ordinary moments and conversations that permeate life, whether at its height or at its end." — National Translation Award committee
"A quiet and modest novel that struck me with its lovely prose and profound insights. . . Gonzalez focuses on the glimpses of beauty, the shards of light found in the everyday. A thoughtful meditation on art, family and loss; this slim novel reads like an afternoon reverie, hazy, supple, tinged with sadness and joy." — Lithub
"A very poetic reverie...This is in some ways a reflection on aging...and in others simply a picturesque and vivid remembrance of the moments that mattered in one person's life. At the bottom of it all is the narrator's unending grief over his son, Jacobo, paralyzed when a junkie driving a pickup truck struck the taxi he was riding in at the time...The book’s narrative style is both modest and subdued, no doubt aided by Rosenberg, who previously translated the author’s last work, The Storm (2018)." — Kirkus Reviews
"In González’s genial, reflective tale, a recently widowed Colombian painter composes a narrative of his family’s life in the U.S. and the death of their oldest son . . . laced with moments of beauty and domestic peace . . . González achieves a brilliant triangulation of a man’s attempts at self-expression through two artistic mediums." Publishers Weekly
"González's last two novels, Difficult Light and The Storm were both hailed as quiet masterpieces at the time of their publication in Colombia... Through all his work you find the peaceful writing that admirably traces the ugliness of the world; the confidence of the narrative voice, seemingly conventional while eschewing the straitjackets of realism... he has a mysterious ability to uplift the commonplace and turn it into unforgettable images through careful observation and sensuous detail." Juan Gabriel Vásquez, The Guardian
"There’s hard light indeed for 78-year-old artist David, who’s recently widowed, unable to paint owing to failing eyesight, and at home in Colombia, using a magnifying glass and blackberry-sized letters to record grievous events that unfolded when he and his family lived in 1980s Manhattan...González unfolds the story in luminous, reverberant language all the more heart-wrenching for eschewing graphic detail; David’s painterly sensitivity is enough." Library Journal
"[Tomás González] writes with authority about transient relationships with cities and people, pairing joys with inevitable losses . . .
Difficult Light presents the power of creativity over isolation and mortality. It reminds the reader that when the outside world becomes inaccessible, the interior realm still holds traces of all that we’ve lost."
Rain Taxi Review
"A quiet meditation on many of life’s Big Things: grief, love, art . . . González’s narrator unwinds his time- and space-hopping narrative in a voice, carried deftly by Rosenberg, that does not waver in its gentle warmth." — Words Without Borders
"Tomás González has once again given voice to a sorrowful sermon. Rending and tender, Difficult Light is a novel of familial sacrifice and agonizing acceptance, an exercise in retracing old wounds amid the gathering abundance of time. An affecting altarpiece, through and through." Justin, Bookshop.org
"Difficult Light by Tomás González is about an old painter rapidly turning blind, mediating on one of the most impactful events in his life, the death of his oldest son Jacobo...counting down the minutes to the scheduled death of this beloved son, which could be called off at any moment, if the son wished to do so, is part of the strange thrill of the book. As the implications for the looming deadline become more clear, the countdown adds a slightly perverted sense of suspense." — Franziska Lamprecht, Full Stop
"Tomás González has the potential to become a classic of Latin American literature." Elfriede Jelinek, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature
"González invokes both Hemingway and Faulkner in his treatment of tortured family dynamics and laces the three-way banter in the boat with a fascinating, near-toxic atmosphere of machismo." Publisher's Weekly on The Storm
"In Andrea Rosenberg's translation, the author's stylistic traits - short and pointed phrases, poetic descriptions and poetic monologues - shine and linger in the reader's ear...The Storm arrives as a welcome addition to the international recognition of one Colombia's most prolific and poetic writers." - Nicolás Llano, Asymptote Journal
"Self-delusion, hallucinations, anger, volatility chafe against the soothing waters and the stars above, and González, one of South America's most acclaimed and pitch-perfect novelists, plunges you into the brutality of man and nature alike." - Kerri Arsenault on The Storm
There is humor in the frequent revelation of self-delusions. There is also suspense as the storm - more interpersonal than weather-related - builds and breaks. Fabulist elements, lyrical prose, and a chorus of narrative voices give this slim novel depth and breadth. - Kirkus Reviews on The Storm
"Tomás González has once again given voice to a sorrowful sermon. Rending and tender, Difficult Light is a novel of familial sacrifice and agonizing acceptance, an exercise in retracing old wounds amid the gathering abundance of time. An affecting altarpiece through and through."
– Justin Walls, Bookshop.org
“A poignant, beautiful book touching upon big themes of family, loss, art, and the critical question of whether death can provide relief from a life filled with chronic pain. González is compassionate without being overtly sentimental. It’s a deeply moving novel that dwells on the intimacy and humour of a family, of displaying resilience amid pain, and as another author has put it, “manages to say new things about the way we feel.”
–– Radhika Pandit, Radhika’s Reading Retreat
★ 04/01/2020
There's hard light indeed for 78-year-old artist David, who's recently widowed, unable to paint owing to failing eyesight, and at home in Colombia, using a magnifying glass and blackberry-sized letters to record grievous events that unfolded when he and his family lived in 1980s Manhattan. With David's career solid if not soaring, the family had moved to a light-blessed apartment on the Lower East Side when a taxi carrying eldest son Jacobo was hit by a drunk driver, leaving Jacobo paralyzed from the waist down and in constant, insurmountable pain. Though brother Pablo had abandoned his academic dreams to help, efforts to retrain Jacobo's body or even diminish his physical anguish are for naught, and as the novel opens, David awaits word with his wife and closest friends of Jacobo's assisted suicide in Oregon. VERDICT González (The Storm) unfolds the story in luminous, reverberant language all the more heart-wrenching for eschewing graphic detail; David's painterly sensitivity is enough. Magnificent.
2020-06-03
An elderly painter with roots in South America reflects on his life since he immigrated to New York City.
It’s hard to say what was on González’s mind as he wrote this novel, nearly 40 years after his debut, In the Beginning Was the Sea (1983), but it’s a very poetic reverie. Our narrator is an aged painter with origins in Bogotá, Colombia—called “Don David” by his housekeeper, Ángela—but in the current timeline, he’s relatively settled in New York. The most important people in his life have been his wife, Sara, whom he married at 26 and was married to for some five decades until she passed away, and his sons, Pablo and Jacobo, each of whom had their own burdens to carry. This is in some ways a reflection on aging, as the painter has macular degeneration and a variety of other maladies, and in others simply a picturesque and vivid remembrance of the moments that mattered in one person's life. At the bottom of it all is the narrator's unending grief over his son, Jacobo, paralyzed when a junkie driving a pickup truck struck the taxi he was riding in at the time. To his credit, González could have written a portrait of triumph over adversity, but life just doesn’t work that way sometimes, and the painter is forced to see his son suffer and finally die. The book’s narrative style is both modest and subdued, no doubt aided by Rosenberg, who previously translated the author’s last work, The Storm (2018). For better or worse, mostly it’s sad, neither a celebration of the narrator’s long life nor an embittered prosecution of the terrible pitfalls that befell him and his. It’s just a life, after all.
Give the author his own ill-fated summation: “It’s a cruel cliché: the last thing you lose is hope.