Borrowed Light: A Novel

Lisa Schamess’s novel is a riveting interior view of a mind facing its own demise—in understated language devoid of histrionics. This is a novel about a particular gay man’s struggle to cope with his imminent death even as he tries to keep up with his professional commitments (he’s a Washington, D.C., architect) and with mending his tangled personal relationships. It is also a story with universal reverberations. The milieu of Schamess’s masterful first novel is David Baum’s dying consciousness; human mortality is its theme.