Reading in the Dark

The Derry of poet Seamus Deane's first novel, Reading in the Dark is a perilous place. Ghosts haunt the stairwells of apartment buildings, a curse follows two families down through the generations, close friends turn out to be police informers and the police are as likely to persecute an innocent man as protect him. And hovering over all the violence, poverty and despair of 1940s Northern Ireland is the spectre of the "Troubles". The hero of the novel is an unnamed young man whose life turns upside down when a policeman frames him. Deception becomes his only means of self-defence. But the initial lie on the part of the policeman and the narrator's corresponding trickery are only part of the tangled web Deane weaves here. Early in the novel we learn that Uncle Eddie, an Irish Republican Army gunman, was blown up in the town distillery in 1922. In addition to sorting out his own problems, the narrator seeks the truth about his uncle's death.

Reading in the Dark sounds grim, and in some respects it is, yet leavening is provided by infusions of the Irish folktales and legends that inform the characters' daily life. And then there is the language. Deane is a poet, and his prose shows it: sex is like fire, "glinting with greed and danger"; ice snores and candles are swathed in a "thick drapery of wax". Readers looking for a thoughtful, serious and beautifully written novel will find one in Reading in the Dark.

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Haunting..in every sense - Rated
It's quite a while since I read this book and it still haunts my thoughts and dreams. A book that gives the average Brit some idea what it's like to live on the edge of war and peace, one community and another, the industrial and the agricultural economy, and the physical and the ghost or paranormal world.

Quite beautiful, and at the same time seriously disturbing.

Thank you Mr Deane.

A joy - Rated
According to my lecturer, this is a Bildungsroman - a novel that paints a picture of the protagonist's development. Well, lecturers can call it whatever they want, I'll just call it a must-read. I'm someone who has little interest in Irish affairs, less interest in Irish history and even less interest in the IRA. However, this novel features all three, and I could hardly recommend it more.

It starts slowly, shortly after the war, in which we get brief glimpses of the unnamed narrator's world, stooped in the innocence and naivety of youth. In fact, it carries on much like this for about a third of the book, but whilst in the hands of lesser writers it would be a laborious struggle, this third flies by. Deane knows how to touch our hearts but also engage and intrigue our minds.

A mystery slowly unfolds throughout the book, full of secrets, lies, betrayals and family myths. But this is not melodrama, though it would be difficult to describe it further without making it sound like an episode of Eastenders. Deane's story gripped me, and I could easily drown in his beautiful, lucid prose.

If only more university set texts could be like this...

A Brave New Ireland - Rated
Reading in the Dark might merely have been one more "miserable Irish childhood" story, sandwiched between Angela's Ashes and Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, and dismissed. Seamus Deane's unnamed boy author -- nameless, it seems, because his world can't be bothered to notice him -- fits squarely between Frank McCourt and Paddy Clarke in era and in social class. He does not suffer Frank's horrific poverty, nor does he own the books that he reads, as Paddy does. The boy's life in a large working-class Catholic family, with its minimal adult supervision, at least one parent who cannot cope, cruel priests for teachers, and the necessary string of funerals, initially seems to be heading down the literary path to deja-vu.

Seamus Deane, born in Derry, Northern Ireland in 1940, and now a professor at the University of Notre Dame, rescues his first novel from this downward spiral with his ability to transform stereotypical storylines into shattering new tales. Deane masterfully subverts the IRA theme of glory and honour; of fighting and dying for Ireland. He gives us the story of the narrator's Uncle Eddie, introduced as an IRA hero who either escaped from or was killed in a shoot-out with Protestant policemen, but who has not been seen or heard from since.

Deane plays with this contrived, glorious IRA getaway story, tempting the reader to take the anecdote at face value, to romanticize Eddie as a hero. He then inserts a twist -- we learn that Eddie does not have a hero's reputation outside of his family, but is seen as a police informer, a "stooly," by the Catholic community. This reputation stains Eddie's entire family, including the nephew that he never met. The boy is ostracized by his community when, about to be beaten by a gang of boys, he throws a stone at a passing police car in an attempt to escape.

"Once and informer, always an informer," the Protestant policemen sneer.

"F----- stooly," shout his friends.

"Is there something amiss with you?" his father asks.

Deane's layered treatment of conflict is gripping. Hiding beneath each layer -- political, religious, familial, and parent-child -- is a secret, founded partly in myth, partly in history, and considered sacred by the novel's adults. Deane turns the centrality of myth and history in Irish society from a charming tale, as it is most often seen, to a source of great turmoil for a young boy.

The narrator, skeptical of the myths that he is bombarded with, and determined to uncover the truth about his family and world, asks questions in a society in which blind faith is required. This throws him and, to an extent, the reader into conflict with everyone around him. The novel's structure, a series of snapshots of events in the boy's life, puts the reader and the boy on even ground in their quest for the truth. Both are privy to the same limited sources of information, both are told the same stories, and both must piece these tidbits together to make sense of the novel's new Ireland.

THE Review of "Reading in the Dark" by Ben Shackleford - Rated
Reading in the Dark is a novel about a boy who grows up during the midst of the troubles in Ireland. We are never told his name, due to the fact that I think it is meant to show that conflict can affect everyone, regardless of who they are. This boy has grown up in a strong Catholic family in an area of Derry, and his views are affected by those around him, particularly the religious people. There is a noticeable them and us feeling from the young narrator, yet this is not chil-like - it reflects how society was at the time. The book is written in prose as a record, almost diary-like. It spans several decades, from when he is a young boy in 1945, ending in 1961. During this time he obviusly becomes a young man. At the heart of the story is the dissappearance of the boys Uncle Eddie, accused of being an informer, in 1922. There is great mistrust, confusion and divide in the family, and only late in the book is the truth revealed. The book is set in the real world setting of Derry, yet there is another, mystical side to the book, based on the old Irish Celtic legends, such as the Sun-Fort of Grianan. The references to Irish traditional culture reflect how Ireland was before the troubles, and could still be. This brings a stark contrast that is effective but slightly confusing. The characters in the book are very extreme, such as the eccentric Crazy Joe Johnson, who's apparent insanity belies is involvement in the family's strife, and the emotional but heartbreakingly quiet members of his family. These characters bring extreme vies and help to accentuate the events. The tragedy of the troubles go right into the family, causing much heartache. The author is trying to make us feel how the destruction of a family as a result of the war makes it seem not worth it. As one character, Seargant Burke points out, the country got caught up in the troubles so fast, they never stopped to think and try to stop. The war eventually takes a back seat to the boy growing up. It goes from a story about a family to a book about the war and its effects on the community, eventually combining both aspects. In my opinion, this book deals with very serious issues, and by putting them through the eyes of a child growing up, it is a thoughtful and in many cases humorous. However, sometimes I found that the referenece to Irish culture and Ireland itself were confusing. The book is wonderful, as heartbreak and humour are mixed in an effective way, but it requires concentration at all times, so is not "easy reading". The rewards far outway the cost of the extra effort. Ben Shackleford.

superb - Rated
Seamus Deane has written a masterpiece. This book, spread over thirty years in short intense bursts, combines the surreal world of childhood, the poisonous small-town hatred making pawns of the individual lives in Derry and the frustrations of a narrator maturing into someone more openminded than his predecessors. The bite-sized portions interweave as densely as a Rushdie tale but are as palatable as an Adrian Mole diary. Covering similar terrain to Angela's Ashes (with which it will inevitably be compared) this is a wonderful piece of modern Irish fiction