Mourning Light

Description

Set in Madison, Wisconsin, and New Haven, Connecticut, in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, Mourning Light is a semi-autobiographical love story. Our narrator, Reb (so named by his mother because of her love of the Daphne du Maurier novel Rebecca), is hounded by guilt over the death of his lover, Anthony, which took place on the same day Reb first met the handsome yet enigmatic Eric. Once Reb becomes convinced that Anthony has sent him a cryptic message from beyond the grave, he becomes obsessed with figuring out what it could mean.
 
Told in a series of flashbacks and remembrances, the novel concludes with a whirlwind of revelations that both complicate and resolve Reb’s view of his world and his lover. Set in Madison, Wisconsin, and New Haven, Connecticut, in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, Mourning Light is a semi-autobiographical love story. Our narrator, Reb, is hounded by guilt over the death of his lover, Anthony. Once Reb becomes convinced that Anthony has sent him a cryptic message from beyond the grave, he becomes obsessed with figuring out what it could mean. “A love story that borders on obsession, an engaging mystery, a meditation on how our relationships evolve even after death, and, finally, a reimagining of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. I found myself entertained, moved, and greatly admiring of Goodkin’s ability to write a novel of such elegance, complexity, and wit.”—Ken Harvey, author of The Book of Casey Adair “A warm, romantic, intelligently written novel. The love story within a love story, set in the era of the AIDS epidemic, is clever, layered, and entertaining even as it deals with loss. It is delightful to read the story of Reb and Anthony falling in love, and moving too because we know where it all ends. We need more stories to document that particularly important and heartbreaking time.”—Lori Soderlind, author of The Change: My Great American, Postindustrial, Midlife Crisis Tour Richard Goodkin is a professor of French at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He has published five monographs on seventeenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century French literature and a historical novel, written in French, about Molière’s mistress and collaborator, Madeleine Béjart.

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