Blue Light Hours

Translator Dantas Lobato debuts with a delicate story of a student’s first year at college and the pain of separation between her and her mother. After the unnamed narrator arrives at her Vermont dorm room, she calls her mother in Brazil every day, regaling her with updates about the New England weather, especially the first snow. The gulf between them widens as the narrator acclimates to college, while her mother remains consumed by chronic migraines and depression. By the spring semester, the mother’s health rebounds while the daughter’s zest for her new environment wanes (“Snow had started to leave a tinge of lifelessness on everything, and I stopped going outside”). The novel’s arc is shaped by a sudden inversion in the mother-daughter dynamic, as the narrator finds herself in need of comfort rather than obliging her mother’s needs. Throughout, Dantas Lobato crafts atmospheric details of the pastoral setting and of the ersatz intimacy of video calls (“My mother stayed in the shade for a moment longer, her cheeks glowing with the blue light of her computer screen”). This shines. Agent: Sarah Bowlin, Aevitas Creative Management. (Oct.)