At the margins of “The Light Room,” the pandemic persists. We glimpse it in the colorful masks of the children in the park, in the Halloween candy chute, in attempts to schedule vaccines. Mostly, though, Covid is not the protagonist but the force that keeps the family indoors, that amplifies their isolation. “The Light Room” is ultimately, as Zambreno writes, “a collection of meditations.” Some may indeed find them “translucent” — light-catching, yes, but also insubstantial. Readers looking for sturdier insights into what the virus has meant for human history are unlikely to discover them here.

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Persons: Covid, John, snot, Joseph Cornell, Natalia Ginzburg, Italo Calvino, David Wojnarowicz, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Yuko Tsushima, I’ve, Zambreno, “, Eleanor Henderson, ” Organizations: Cornell, Ithaca College Locations: naps