This is an impressive yet unsettling novel that I’m glad I read, and am equally glad to have finished. Intensely well written yet deeply uncomfortable.
“A door loses its meaning if you don’t ever go through it. It becomes a wall.”
Plot in a Nutshell
The novel is narrated first by a young boy who has spent his entire life underground, living in a basement bunker with his significantly older siblings, his grandmother, and his parents most of whom were badly injured in a fire before he was born. This closed existence is all he knows, governed by strict rules and a narrow version of the truth.
The arrival of his sister’s new baby unsettles this fragile balance, prompting the boy to question their way of life and the explanations he has always accepted. In the novel’s second half, the narration shifts to third person and moves backwards in time, revealing the events that drove the family underground in the first place.
Thoughts
opening section, in particular, has a dreamlike, almost fairytale quality that perfectly matches the boy’s limited understanding of the world. There is a softness to the language that sits uneasily against what I gradually realised was happening, and that dichotomy is powerful.
The boy himself is the heart of the novel and also it’s strength. His innocence is never overplayed, and his partial comprehension of adult behaviour feels emotionally honest rather than a device. He notices everything without understanding it, and those observations are open, naive, and occasionally chilling. Through his eyes, the bunker’s inhabitants slowly take shape, even as some of the ethics and morality stays out of reach.
Beyond him I struggled to connect with anyone. Even before the full context of the family’s situation emerges, most of the adults are deeply unpleasant: controlling and highly secretive. They are willing to do almost anything whilst justifying it as protection. As the flashback section fills in the gaps, that discomfort only intensifies. I found myself rooting solely for the child, and increasingly angry on his behalf.
One creative choice that consistently jarred for me was the decision not to give any of the characters names. Namelessness can be powerful when the goal is to suggest that a story stands for something collective and bigger. I’m not sure that applies here. This is an intensely specific and quietly intimate story. As such the absence of names felt like it created distance from the characters and the action. It added ambiguity to a novel that already ambiguity by the bucketload.
Emotionally, this is a bruising read. The adults’ behaviour, particularly their commitment to the main deception and associated confinement, is hard to stomach. Once the reasons for their self chosen isolation become clear, my frustration tipped into outright anger. Pen is clearly interested in exploring how fear can evolve into control, and how trauma can be used to excuse harm which are themes that resonate today. However he also refuses to offer reassurance or even a moment of catharsis for the characters or the reader.
Comparisons with Room are inevitable, given the shared premise of confinement, but I don’t think they’re especially helpful. My recall of Room offers a sense of moral clarity. There are clear victims, clear villains, and a stubborn undercurrent of hope. The Light of Fireflies is far murkier and presents a world where hope feels fragile at best. This is a colder, darker novel.
Which is not to say it’s as bad novel. It is not. For readers who appreciate atmosphere and moral complexity over comfort it’s compelling. If as a reader you like psychologically dark fiction that interrogates family, power, and the stories people tell themselves to justify all sorts of damaging behaviour, there is a lot here to admire.
If, however, you need sympathetic characters, or a sense that suffering leads somewhere redemptive this is likely not the book for you. A beautifully written, deeply disturbing read