192 pages. Published October 15, 2024 by Grove Press. Fiction.
This is the tender account of the relationship between a mother and a daughter when the daughter goes off to college in the US, how it evolves with the distance and changing rhythms of their lives. It’s a story about separation: leaving home and the culture you know to become an international student, speaking and thinking in a new language which starts to put up a barrier between you and home. It’s about all the meanings of home, and how we all, at some point, learn to leave so as to grow into ourselves. But the young woman in the story also has to learn new ways to maintain those ties to home, because her mom is sick, and alone—and knowing the anxiety of being the daughter of a single mom, and being far away; every word rings true to me. For me, modern technology made the distance seem shorter, as it does for the young woman of the story: she and her mom maintain contact through regular Skype calls—the blue light of the title.
It’s beautiful the way Bruna Dantas Lobato makes the rhythm of the changing seasons the rhythm of the changes in the relationship between the two women; that’s in fact the crux of the story. I waited anxiously for something to happen to the mom—my own anxiety, when I was away from mine—but that’s not this story. The mom, too, is learning here to let go of her child, and finding new ways of relating to her. After many years of giving herself to caring for her daughter—being the sole caregiver—the shape of her life must change, and she, too, is discovering who she is now.
Thanks to Grove Press and to NetGalley for early access to a DRC.
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Harare Review of Books 
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