Difficult Light

Reviews / Votes

"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 Gonzalez'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 . . . Gonzalez achieves a brilliant triangulation of a man's attempts at self-expression through two artistic mediums." -- Publishers Weekly

"Gonzalez'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 Vasquez, 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...Gonzalez unfolds the story in luminous, reverberant language all the more heart-wrenching for eschewing graphic detail; David's painterly sensitivity is enough." -- Library Journal


"[Tomas Gonzalez] 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 . . . Gonzalez'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

"Tomas Gonzalez 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 Tomas Gonzalez 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

"Tomas Gonzalez has the potential to become a classic of Latin American literature." -- Elfriede Jelinek, Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

"Gonzalez 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." - Nicolas Llano, Asymptote Journal

"Self-delusion, hallucinations, anger, volatility chafe against the soothing waters and the stars above, and Gonzalez, 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

"Tomas Gonzalez 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. Gonzalez 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