Halfway Down the Tunnel of Light

About this book

The narrator grew up with the tunnel of light before he ever heard the phrase. His mother told the story at the kitchen table when he and his sisters were small: how, in 1978, delivering his second sister in a small Malaysian hospital, the power failed and she began to haemorrhage, how the doctor in charge fought for hours to save her, how their father was called and waited outside, and how she, on the table, had felt herself leave her body and enter a tunnel of light that drew her deeper and deeper, beyond her control, until, frightened and certain she was leaving the world, she asked with everything she had for another chance, and woke halfway down. She never forgot it. Her children never forgot her telling it.