Where The Light Gets In by Zoë Coyle
There’s a 1955 song that declares “love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage.” Zoë Coyle’s debut novel Where the Light Gets In (2022) pairs love up with something different: grief. Are love and grief intrinsically intertwined? And, to go back to our song, can you have one without the other? According to Coyle’s novel: no, you can’t. The director and found of the company Pilot Light and a leading facilitator for Dr Brenè Brown’s Dare to Leader programme, Coyle was inspired by her own terminally ill mother’s decision to end her life to craft her stunning debut.
The novel focuses on Delphi Hoffman, a young woman finally hitting her stride in London with a new love affair and new job, who is abruptly summoned to her mother’s side in Australia. Vivian, her mother, suffers a terminal illness and has called Delphi to help her end her suffering – an ask of impossible magnitude for a daughter.
From there, the story follows Delphi as she grapples with her mother’s death, the subsequent tidal wave of grief and shame, and the reconstruction of her own identity now that she has lost her anchor in life. There are family secrets uncovered, deep-seated tragedies grappled with and the return time and time again to the fundamental question: how do we love again knowing the inevitability of grief to follow?
Where the Light Gets In takes you on a ride and at times the twists and turns of the narrative have you questioning where the story might be heading and, indeed, how you (and Delphi) even got to this place. But my one piece of advice – trust in Coyle’s storytelling. She has a masterplan, and we just have to be willing to go along as it unfolds.
The theme of grief and its wrecking-ball effect on the human psyche is central to the plot, but additionally, Coyle’s story has a common thread of bodily autonomy, particularly as it pertains to women. The obvious is the bodily autonomy demanded by Vivian in the grips of her terminal illness; she desires a good death, an end to her suffering, the likes of which is so easily accessible to end the lives of animals, but is denied to human beings. This sentiment is encapsulated by the euthanising of a family dog and this poignant moment:
“The siblings hold the dog and each other – a huddle of grief.
It was peaceful, dignified and loving.
‘It should have been like this for Mama, Jack.’”
For Delphi, her body is subjugated to the whims of the men around her. From the onset, we are given glimpses into the struggles of women trying to carve out enough space to exist in the world. There is a small but triggering moment of a man taking up the armrest on an aeroplane alongside Delphi:
“Are you for real?” he asks disdainfully. He replaces his headphones and moves half his arm off the rest. She almost misses the word over the pulsing in her eyes. ‘Bitch.’
Delphi’s body, at the beginning of the novel, is treated as a vehicle, a tool, and she uses it to lose herself in meaningless encounters as a coping method, giving away parts of herself in the process:
“Through sex she has reached for many things; for fun, distraction, to give pleasure, to be chosen, to see that view from the cliff’s edge…”
“Good sex is like art… but bad sex leaves grime and replaces the soft parts of us with brittle parched ones.”
As the story progresses, there are further instances of control being exerted over her autonomy: a father who demands that she bend to his will and threatens to cut her out of his life if she refuses to follow the path he carves out for her. There is another man who imprints on her body quite literally, stamping her like property and further disconnecting Delphi from her own sense of being. Even in the moment of an ultrasound, Delphi’s sense of privacy is invaded by student doctors looking on, violating her body.
“Delphi answers, ‘Yes,” when everything inside her is saying, No.
The students file in. Delphi wishes she hadn’t consented to an audience. Why in sod’s name does she always try to be so bloody helpful?”
The patriarchal influence on Delphi’s body and the ways in which the masculine twists and distorts her speak to the unique pain known to all who identify as women. The men in power are forever placing laws on our bodies and snatching away our voices when we try to speak against them.
Coyle’s writing through the novel is powerful and sublime. Her prose is constructed in a polished and careful manner that you can’t help but appreciate – it is obvious that there is time and effort put into each sentence, and each word is placed there with meaning and significance.
Coyle wants you to think after you read this novel, to consider the points raised and made. It could be argued that there are perhaps too many important issues tackled for a single novel, but such is Coyle’s raw talent that she is able to weave these in without it becoming too overwhelming.
In the time since publication, voluntary assisted dying laws have been passed in all states of Australia, but this by no means diminishes the impact of the novel. By not centring the narrative purely on the act of the euthanasia itself, but instead focusing on the reasons, the aftermath and the complexity of the grief that coincides with it, the novel remains timeless and no less important to read.
I laughed, I cried, I underlined a million passages with an internal sigh of longing to be able to craft prose so beautifully. There is no doubt this is a sensational debut well worth your time.
Shaeden Berry is a writer from Boorloo (Perth), Western Australia who has written for Refinery29, MamaMia, Fashion Journal and Oody Koo the Journal. When she’s not writing or reading, you can find her staring adoringly at her two cats. For more, and for content of said cats, follow her on Instagram @berrywellthanks