7 o’clock in the morning. The countdown has started. In four hours, my father will be dead. I’m 13 months old.

It took many years and multiple detours before the author was able to address the story she never wanted to examine: her father’s sudden death. The Light of Day, an intimate book, marks the end of this long period of amnesia. Valérie Clo tactfully stages all the characters in the tragedy: her father, her mother, herself, her family… She remembers her grandparents, whose mother tongue was Arabic; talks about Tunisia; reconnects the fragile thread of her origins; relates memories that aren’t her own. For her, so suddenly, nothing was ever the same. So suddenly, a dark, heavy, opaque veil fell over everything. Luckily, a love of words saved her. Torn from the darkness of her early childhood, these touching pages tell a tale of liberation. Of a soothing return to the light of day.

A father’s death. A life indelibly marked. Years later, the narrator relates her mourning and her return to The Light of Day.