Reading in the Dark: A Novel

by Seamus Deane

Book Overview

A New York Times Notable Book Winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize Winner of the Irish Times Fiction Award and International Award "A swift and masterful transformation of family griefs and political... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375700234
• Release Date: February 1998
• Publisher: Vintage International
• Length: 245 Pages
• Weight: 0.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.6" x 5.2"

Customer Reviews

Like a Poignant Memoir

This beautiful book reads more like a poignant and heartbreaking memoir than a novel. It's difficult to believe the incidents described are really fiction and not the author's reality...they are described so well and in just the right detail.Reading in the Dark is a story of ghosts, of legends, and most of all, of secrets...Irish secrets. The narrator, whose name we never learn, struggles to unravel the truth of those secrets and as he does, he learns what it really means to grow up in Northern Ireland, surrounded by the shadows of political turmoil.Although I really didn't identify with any of the characters in this book, I found them very engrossing and came to care about them deeply. Some of the characters are quite well-fleshed out while others remain only fragments of the author's imagination. Most make only brief appearances in the novel, although one, Liam, shares the spotlight with the unnamed narrator.Reading in the Dark is a different sort of coming-of-age story. It is beautiful, lyrical, brutal and truly unforgettable. And truly the work of an Irish mind.

A Beautiful Triumph

Seamus Deane is a wonderful poet as well as a historian andanthologist of Irish literature. Reading in the Dark, however, is hisfirst novel. It is both a triumph of literature and of the humanspirit; one of the most beautiful books anyone could ever hope toread.Deane, like James Joyce, is a writer who cannot be separatedfrom his native Ireland. Reading in the Dark is the first-personnarrative of a boy, who, like Deane, grew up in Derry in the 1940s and1950s. Although the dust jacket says this book is a novel, it readsmore like a beautiful, meditative and intensely personal memoir. Weare never told the boy/narrator's name, but there are many namedcharacters in the book: Ellis, Una, Dierdre, Liam, Gerard, Eamon.There is an Uncle Manus and an Aunt Katie. Additonally, the placenames serve to identify this as an unquestionalby Irish book, takingplace in Derry.The structure of Reading in the Dark is deliberatelyjagged but never jarring. There are short chapters that are furtherdivided into ever shorter episodes. We are introduced to all of thenarrator's many borthers and sisters but only one, Liam, becomes amajor character throughout the course of the book. The othercharacters deliberately come and go and some are even forgettable,while others are not.The first vignette is dated "February1945" and the last "July 1971." All the other vignettesfall within this time frame. But Derry, the reader must remember, isin Northern Ireland, where the past can never really be separated fromthe present. Remembering is an essential part of life in Derry andthe past is the present in the fear, the death, the haunted faces offriends and family. Most of all, though, the past of Derry is presentin that most hurtful of all human hurts: betrayal.We first meet thenarrator and his mother when she is standing on the landing in theirhouse. The boy, who is standing on the tenth step says, "I couldhave touched her." The mother, however, stops him, saying,"Don't move...There's something there between us. A shadow.Don't move." The boy, who sees no shadow, nevertheless obeys.With the passing of the years, however, we, along with the narrator,come to plumb the secrets of this mother's heart; as we learn how hersecrets have come to define and torture her, we also learn how theyhave come to define and trouble her son.The shadows and ghosts inReading in the Dark come to haunt the narrator in many ways. As hehears his family speak of events that took place in Derry years beforehe was born, he comes to wonder why these events happened and why theyhappened as they did. We learn the answers to some of thequestions but we never learn more than the narrator does. Ifsomething remains to haunt him, it also remains to haunt us. For thenarrator, as for us, the answers come in fragments and not at all inany easy manner. Together, they form the boy's coming-of-age and theyserve to deepen our own understanding of the true nature of humantrust and betrayal, the two emotions that m

The Way of Every Flesh

The book of Irish poet Seamus Deane describes a childhood of an unnamed protagonist in Northern Ireland in the 1950s. This gives opportunity to attain impartial attitude to the situation in Derry in order not to blame participants of the conflict but to discern its cause and motives. Old family mysteries' disclosing makes the novel a real pageturner, but it is only a part of author's plot.Seamus Deane masterly reconstructs a wonderful universe of child's fantasies: enigmatic and thrilling adult world appears as an exciting fairy tale with additional heroic or terrifying tinges of local political discord. The child grows up, and fantastic histories lose their charms acquiring outlines of reality in terrors, cowardice and treachery of their personae. Former semigods, parents become ordinary mortals with their fears, pains and guilts; but extra knowledge and futher understanding give both additional strength and pride in never-ending children-parents rivalry and additional yearning after innocence of childhood lost once and for all. We become adults only when in comprehension of our parent's vulnerability we find compassion for them. And hope for future mercy from our own children.An excellent novel!

Lyrical, spellbinding

Reading in the Dark, along with Call it Sleep, and Mass for the Dead, is one of the best books I've read about growing up and family ties. The story is spellbinding and each sentence has the imagery of rhythmn of a poem. I regret that Seamus Deane's Selected Poems are out of print, because I would like to read more from this author. Reading this book takes concentration because it is so rich in language and imagery. The effort is well rewarded.

Beautiful literature

This is a book for one who wishes more than the tired prose of Frank Mccourt. Deane explores the conflict in Ireland with economy of words, and clarity of language: it is simple, but with passion. He exposes the ugliness of the Northern Ireland confilct without implicating the parties involved. It is a love story between mother and son. If you like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, you will like Deane.