Individual passages like these, fresh in both wording and perception, could understandably prompt our bookshop browser to buy “Girl in the Dark,” but a cover-to-cover reading will reveal the unfortunate global flaw preventing what are essentially journal entries (as intimated in a final author’s note) from reinvention as a book.

Reflecting, for instance, on one psychological side effect of her disability, Lyndsey considers that, though music should be that rare available comfort during lightless confinement, in fact she cannot bear it in any form, because “somehow, music listened to in solitary darkness becomes devastating in its power.” It “unhinges me, reduces to howling chaos my prudent tidying of emotion, my management of agony.” Such inability to dictate even small terms of her imprisonment leads her, and therefore us, to the insight that “illness reminds us of the limits of human will.” The book’s short, fragmentary chapters range from background narrative to lyric contemplation to descriptions of games one can play in the dark, and flashes of acute perception abound. Like a poet, Anna Lyndsey (a pseudonym) is both close observer and philosopher, capable of describing her world and also of pondering what it signifies. But she cannot enjoy a normal life with him, cannot go out in the day, even making love is uniquely awkward.A reader trolling the bookstore’s memoir section, sampling passages from random volumes, finally encountering Anna Lyndsey’s melodic, penetrating prose among the drama-heavy movie-of-the-week wannabes, might be excused for any unbecoming public outburst: a fist in the air, say, and a bellow of “Score!” For although “Girl in the Dark” is based on the author’s experience of a startling medical condition - full-body light sensitivity so severe that Lyndsey becomes largely restricted to a stifling blackout room - a spot-check of its paragraphs reveals the quiet, ingenious consciousness of a poet. In many ways he is Anna's savior, offering her shelter from the light in his home. And throughout there is her relationship with Pete. During periods of relative remission she can venture cautiously out at dawn and dusk, into a world which, from the perspective of her normally cloistered existence, is filled with a remarkable beauty. Now, when her symptoms are at their worst she must spend months on end in a blacked-out room, losing herself in audio books and elaborate word games in an attempt to ward off despair.

The reaction soon spread to her entire body. Soon this progressed to an intolerance of fluorescent light, then of sunlight itself. But then she started to develop worrying symptoms: her face felt like it was burning whenever she was in front of the computer. She was ambitious and worked hard she had just bought an apartment she was falling in love.

Girl in the Dark by Anna Lyndsey