Bookshelf 2023: "beautifully written, gripping"

Love the Dark Days [...] is a beautifully-written, gripping memoir by Indian-born Trinidadian journalist Ira Mathur. [...] The book alternates between, on the one hand, reflections on Mathur’s early life, attempts to fit in to unfamiliar Trini realities and forge an identity, and on the other, the memorable weekend she spent as Derek Walcott’s guest in St Lucia. Searingly intimate in its depictions of family relations, this book traces Mathur’s attempt to deal with her complicated past and to find herself through writing—to follow Walcott’s advice to her, to “write in the present”—though the differing colonial histories of India and Trinidad constantly threaten to overshadow her thoughts and dreams.