Where the Light Goes by Sara Barnard
A weekend treat for you in the form of a wonderful blog from author Sara Barnard. Her book deals with suicide and she is often asked about her fear in writing about this topic.
There’s this question that I keep getting asked about writing Where the Light Goes:
Weren’t you scared?
Weren’t you scared about getting it right? Weren’t you scared about getting it wrong? Weren’t you scared about what publishers would say? Or librarians? Weren’t you scared about how it might make you feel?
And the question takes me by surprise every time, because even though the implied answer is yes, the honest answer is no. I wasn’t scared. I wanted to write this book, and I wanted to talk about all of the things contained in its pages, and all the reasons why people think I should have been scared.
Where the Light Goes is a sad book, it’s true. It’s a book about a girl who has lost her beloved older sister, who also happened to be extremely famous, to suicide. Emmy, my protagonist, is trying to stay afloat in the sea of grief left behind. Her whole world has changed, and so has she.
With good reason, ‘suicide’ is a scary word for people. So even though this book is about bereavement and grief, not suicide itself, the proximity is enough to make people wince when they hear the premise. You see a flash in their eyes, You can’t write about that! Aren’t you scared?
No. And we should write about this. We should talk about it, too. We should be shining lights into the darkest places, not hurrying past with eyes averted and whispers hushed. Because those people who are in those dark places really, really need that light. They need people to take the time to look and listen and try to understand. This is true for anyone – and suicide prevention research supports the act of talking – but it’s particularly true for young people.
This book is for those young people – the ones who need it. Whether that’s because they’ve lost someone, or they love someone who has lost someone and they don’t know how to help them, or they know that one day one or both of these things might happen to them.
And it’s also for the adults who are scared. Who know these conversations – about bereavement and loss and grief and toxic fame and suicide and mental health and pain and struggle – are important, but don’t know how to have them themselves. Who can hold out the right book at the right time to the right reader and say, Read this. This might help.
For those wishing to discuss the book with students or book groups, please check out the guide below.