Going "mad"! Losing "It"! - What am I saying?

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	• Darkmans Nicola Barker Harper Perennial, 2007 - 848 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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Going "mad"! Losing "It"! - What am I saying?

I say this from the depths of my cerebral cortex: I truly have no idea what this book, in toto, is about. Yes, the editorials and other reviewers are correct in that the past, so to speak, is a definite theme - that is, if you grant that there actually is a past, present, and future existing, as we like to think of them, in a causal fashion - a notion this book seems to play merry hell with, I might add. But the "seepage of the past into the present", or however one wants to phrase it, in not what caught this reader's eye. Faulkner and, more recently, Graham Swift in his novel Waterland, are much better at that sort of thing; nor does Thomas Pynchon seem the main influence here - I noticed no triple integrals or higher mathematics in the book. Rather, Barker's master seems to be Joyce and her main concern to be with words, their power over us, their ability to confound us, our helplessness without them. But I'm getting a tad ahead of myself. Here are the three things that I found most striking:

1.) The verve and panache with which the younger set of Barker's characters (i.e., Kelly and Kane) use the modern British idiom. It's truly spot on and delightful. Yank readers be prepared to look some words up, and don't get chuffy about it!

2.) The humour is blindingly funny. I'm thinking particularly of Kelly's - um - conversion to Christianity. What makes these scenes doubly grand, moreover, is however insane and wavering and comical it comes across. - And it DOES come across that way, Deo Laus. - This is actually the way most people I know find some sense of the numinous in their lives. Even the most orthodox believers seldom experience a road to Damascus experience settling everything for all time. It's filled with doubts and apprehensions and yes, comedy. In short, despite (or because of) the high comedy, Kelly's experience rings extraordinarily true to the psychological reality of belief. I was reminded of Nietzsche's comment that he could only believe in a God that could laugh.

3.) WORDS-Indo-European, werdh, Latin, verbum, Sanskrit, vratam command, law. The characters frequently come to the point of mental breakdown and aphasia through constant groping for the right words, especially when the history of the word occurs to them. A sample from Dory's Diary:

"(The whore playing the martyr? What a joke! What a travesty)...Travesty: trans - over + vestire - to dress. I still find myself using words which I can't understand." I might add that "trans" also means "across" in Latin - Crossdresser? The book is permeated with etymological breakdowns (in both senses) like this one. This is why I say Joyce is Barker's true master. Ever had a go at Finnegans Wake?

But, more importantly, these are the passages of the book (and they are legion) that struck home most piquantly to me. I know EXACTLY how these characters feel, and Barker, needless to say, does as well. They feel as if they are losing their hold on what connects them to other human beings, "the shareable part of experience" as it was once put to me by an Oxford don. They feel, in other words, like they are going insane. And the reader, at least this reader, whose head is crammed full of Latin and Ancient Greek, feels the slippage along with them. - As a personal example, I can't say how many times I've mulled over the word "nice" which comes from "nescire" in Latin, to be ignorant. Am I, in some fundamental way that I'm only half consciously aware of calling a person an ignoramus, a fool, an idiot when I say that s/he is "nice"? I have, in fact, had to expunge that particular word from my vocabulary because it troubles me so. For any reader who has reflected on how s/he communicates with others (or fail in some way to do so), these recurrent semantic breakdowns become eerie almost to the point of terror as they mount throughout the book.

But, as I say, I don't really know what this book is "about", if anything. The truth is....well, what Peta says near the end, "The truth is just a series of disparate ideas which briefly congeal and then slowly fall apart again..." p. 824. This is a very good description of what happens in the book as well. If there were just a tad more to it, I would give it five stars.

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Incredible Ride!

I am still reeling from Nicola's incredibly unique writing style. Her characters are so authentic & vivacious that after almost 900 pages Kelly & Gaffar now feel a part of my history!

I literally damaged my wrist holding this book in bed as I read it & was awakened on several occasions by it falling from my sleepy hands but you just cannot give-up on this crazy & hysterically funny (& tragic) adventure that Nicola takes you on - her writing is ALIVE in a way few authors can hope to achieve. What an amazing young talent!

Admittedly I still haven't got a clue what the whole book was about & certainly feel as though I am intellectually flawed at not being able to understand the finer nuances (or losing the plot entirely) BUT that - amazingly - did not diminish my enjoyment of this strange yet brilliant book.

Treat yourself - you won't regret it - but get bandages to support your hands before you try holding the book :)

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Excellent!

First, a big THANKS to Nicola Barker for writing this book! Excellent! The people in her book are a little reminiscent of those in Joyce Cary's First Trilogy (real people, with eccentricities), but she defines them in a more interesting way. Her writing is also reminiscent of Thomas Pynchon's writing in Gravity's Rainbow (another deep thinker with a desire to entertain). But her writing stands on its own, and her style is singular. Her understanding and creation of people and their dialog is awesome. Her writing is almost cinematic in style; it could easily be transferred to a script - not that it's simplistic, but rather that it's fully-fleshed (where necessary). The basic plot is deep enough to keep it mysterious throughout the book, and the I was immersed in the lives of the characters to the end.

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reviews: page 1, 2

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Darkmans is an exhilarating, extraordinary examination of the ways in which history can play jokes on us all... If History is just a sick joke which keeps on repeating itself, then who exactly might be telling it, and why? Could it be John Scogin, Edward IV's infamous court jester, whose favorite pastime was to burn people alive - for a laugh? Or could it be Andrew Boarde, Henry VIII's physician, who kindly wrote John Scogin's biography? Or could it be a tiny Kurd called Gaffar whose days are blighted by an unspeakable terror of - uh - salad? Or a beautiful, bulimic harpy with ridiculously weak bones? Or a man who guards Beckley Woods with a Samurai sword and a pregnant terrier?

Darkmans is a very modern book, set in Ashford [a ridiculously modern town], about two very old-fashioned subjects: love and jealousy. It's also a book about invasion, obsession, displacement and possession, about comedy, art, prescription drugs and chiropody. And the main character? The past, which creeps up on the present and whispers something quite dark - quite unspeakable - into its ear.

The third of Nicola Barker's narratives of the Thames Gateway, Darkmans is an epic novel of startling originality.

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