A dizzying prose about body dysmorphia and anorexia, This Impossible Light is a short prose novel unlike any other. It has an interesting style of poetic workspace while telling the story of a short novel. However, the spacing does not help with the story, and the length of the entire book is likely less than one hundred pages without the spacing. The interesting poetic style doesn’t really follow much structure, but has tabulations on the third line, and generally ends with two lines to separate the end of a “thought”, or a paragraph from the book that lasts around a page. These thoughts are constructed on each page to bring a heartwrenching story.
The story’s substance is touching, though the characters, except for the mother and Anna, are not as well-baked. Sometimes, this book feels too stereotypical as a teenage book, and that’s okay. It discusses and explains the mindset of anorexia terrifyingly well, making it hard to read at times. The book’s overarching theme isn’t just about a girl who suffers from body dysmorphia, though: it is about a girl who has lost everything, and then misconstrues what they thinks success is. They begin to criticise every part of themselves, something that everyone can relate to. The universal message is the acceptance of others. This is a three out of five, for dealing with intense and difficult feelings well, but for not having much substance of a story. The prose style is interesting but distracts from the story at times, and can make it difficult to read due to its strange spacing and other attributes.