Borrowed Light

This stunning debut novel_so affecting, startling, and painfully clear in its evocations of loss and transience_shows us how it is possible to love fully the wounded world in which we live and die. In its explorations of grief and love, Borrowed Light is unflinching, dignified, beautiful, and true."_Richard McCann Lisa Schamess's novel is much more than a book about the scourge of AIDS. It is a riveting interior view of a mind facing its own demise_in understated language devoid of histrionics. This is a novel about a particular gay man's struggle to cope with his imminent death even as he tries to keep up with his professional commitments (he's a Washington, D.C., architect) and with mending his tangled personal relationships. It is also a story with universal reverberations. The milieu of Schamess's masterful first novel is David Baum's dying consciousness; human mortality is its theme.