How the Light Gets In

by Joyce Maynard

of being seen as stupid, or incapable of understanding anything. If people aren’t staring at him for his odd way of walking, more than likely they just act as if he doesn’t exist. If they talk to him at all, they speak slowly, and loudly.

They’ve got him labeled: “Special Needs.” Or, as the social worker who evaluated him reported, back when Toby was under investigation for sex crimes he didn’t commit,...

They’d say Thank you. I’m sorry. I forgive you. I love you—the

the Ho‘oponopono

p...

Let life be good enough is what she asks for these days.

Good enough is more attainable. This is my life, she tells herself. In the balance, she considers it a good one.

Mom. How long has it been since Ursula called her that? Just when Eleanor gave up looking for her daughter, here she is.

“We all need that sometimes,” Eleanor tells her. Imperfect as our mothers may be, we need them.

For Toby, it’s always wonderful to have his family around. For Eleanor, the reward is simple,

and huge. She has her family around her. She can still do her work. She has her daughter back.

“We need to get to work on this,” Toby tells him. “We need to turn you into an entity.”

John Prine. The audiobook of Jimmy Carter’s story about growing up in Georgia, An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood, recorded by President Carter

“You know that feeling where you feel so proud of a person your heart could burst?” he tells Eleanor. “That’s how

I get, seeing Spyder work on his math.” Eleanor does know that feeling. She has it now, for this son of hers. So much love it hurts.

June understands what it means to pay attention. To take your time. She may be deaf, but June knows how to listen.

Toby, has even forgiven her for the bogus charges of child abuse. He is a person incapable of holding on to bitterness. It’s a good lesson for the rest of them.

Sometimes the best thing a person can do is simply listen.

Now is one such time.

“That sounds hard,” Toby says. “I can see why you feel bad.”

He’s a boy who walks on the sunny side of the street. This has been true all his life.

If you live long enough, everything happens. The good

and the terrible. And it may be the case—it probably is—that a person’s glorious triumphs seldom serve as the best teachers of what it means to be human. The lessons are all in the failures. Failure keeps you humble. Failure opens your heart

to all those other people out there who also fall short. It makes a pe...

If she pays attention. If she doe...

You can find this playlist on Spotify under the title “Eleanor’s Playlist (How the Light Gets In).” The songs contained here speak

to a wide range of musical styles. What they add up to is the soundtrack of this novel, and of Eleanor’s world. Here, now, comes a rundown on some of the music mentioned in How the Light Gets In: Israel Kamakawiwo‘ole’s

song again in the

same way. “The Riddle Song” is a classic English folk song I used to sing to my children. Eleanor did the same with hers. Warren Zevon’s album The Wind—recorded as he was dying of lung cancer—features a couple

of songs that can tear your heart out, in which a dying man (Zevon himself) speaks to a woman he loves. The songs mentioned in these pages are “Please Stay” and “Keep Me in Your Heart.” Warren...

of Dylan’s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” for this album. This rendition moves me even more powerfully than Dylan’s own. “Simple Gifts” is a Shaker hymn Eleanor and her family...

my opinion, families don’t sing together enough. Mine always did. I wanted to honor the folk/Americana singers and songwriters Eleanor and Cam listened to. These are favor...

Iris DeMent, Alison Krauss, Richard Shindell, Tracy Chapman, Emmylou Harris, Buddy Miller, Gillian Welch (“Orphan Girl” could be Eleanor’s theme song), Patty Griffin, Eliza Gilkyson, Joni Mitchell...

singer from Maine I first heard in 1978 and follow still. “The Garden Song,” also by David Mallett, sometimes finds its way onto the program at children’s school concerts—as it do...

Lulu, complete with gardening hand gestures. A modern classic. When Jake is trying to convey to Ursula—after she’s left him—the depth of his devotion to her, he has no words. So he...