What does a woman in her seventies make of her life on the other side of blindness? Relic Light is a story told by Beatrice, whose reality is upended when she loses her ability to see. While her mathematician husband is away at work at Columbia or visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she wanders through their empty house north of New York City and allows her mind to drift into unexpected and painful places. There are solid guideposts for her along the way remembered paintings and novels to contemplate; memories of her husband, children, and parents; her close friendship with a neighbour but her fragmented thoughts often carry her in a dozen directions, offering an intimate and original portrait of a mind in motion. Blindness has isolated Beatrice, removed her from what she can verify with her own eyes, but it also may offer her a gateway into new possibilities a ‘re-visioning’ of her world.
