Reading in the Dark by Seamus Deane

 

Published: 1996, Jonathan Cape

Genre: Fiction

Themes: northern ireland, the troubles, family

My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤❤

While the library is closed I am re-reading some of the books on my own shelves and I'm glad the lockdown bought me back to this gem of a book.

Reading in the Dark by Seamus Deane is such an accomplished piece of writing that it could act as a real deterrent to lesser mortals to ever try to commit a story to paper.  It tells the tale of a family in Northern Ireland who suffer over three generations because of the grandfather's political associations and the true story of a shadowy incident in the past is gradually revealed by his grandson.

As I was about to write the paragraph above, I realised I couldn't think of the boy's name, and I turned back to the book to flip through the pages to find it.  It was only then I discovered that the boy is never named but I didn't notice that at any point when I was reading the book.

Each chapter is only a few pages long, and at first they seem like isolated incidents in the life of a child, and it's written in a very 'Irish' way with a real sense of cold air and anger interwoven with ghosts and madness.  It draws the reader in slowly as the characters build and light begins to shine on the past.  Everyone seems to know something, but no one knows all of it, and the revelations come like cards being dealt from a pack.  

Some of the chapters could stand alone as short pieces of fiction writing and my absolute favourite is 'Maths Class' that has a quicker tempo than the rest of the book and one line made me laugh out loud when I came to it.  Father Gildea is explaining the ground rules for his session on mental algebra to the class and each boy will take a turn in answering one of the sums from the text book.  The question they must answer depends on whether the previous question was answered correctly so:

'The choice enriches as one proceeds, so that by the time we reach the evolutionary cul-de-sac named Irwin at the back of the class, the choice will be veritably kaleidoscopic.'

These tiny glimpses of humour act as a release from the darker episodes in the book, and as well as the big question that is answered at the end, the reader feels the constant pressure put upon Catholic families by the police and the Church itself.  Hardship and brutality can arrive without warning, and people develop their own coping mechanisms to deal with it.

These days we are used to the constant presence of media reporting everything and anything that happens, and it is easy to forget how much could be covered up or altered in the mid twentieth century.  Family incidents were embellished or covered up, and after a while the truth would be forgotten or lost, and impossible to bring it back.  The hidden incidents in the book are only bought to light by piecing together fragments of truth uttered in times of duress or indiscretion, but then the whole painful reality becomes too big and harmful to share.

This book is a powerful read short listed for the Booker Prize in 1996 and winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize.  I hope they use it in schools.