Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #677048 in Books
• Published on: 2001-11-05
• Binding: Paperback
• 472 pages

Excerpted from The Dark Clue by James Wilson. Copyright © 2001. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
From the journal of Walter Hartright, 13th October, 185-

God! What a night!

I dreamed I was by a lake. It was black, and unnaturally still, but fringed by half-submerged trees, from which I knew it had but lately flooded. As I watched, the moon came up, and I saw that there was something white stirring beneath the surface. At first I thought it was a great shoal of fish; but then I noticed that it did not move, but merely seemed to ripple in some invisible current. And then, all at once, I knew: these were bodies - hundreds, thousands of them - broken from their graves by the deluge.

In the same moment, I became aware that a man was standing next to me. He was short, and wore a long black coat and a black hat. It seems obvious, now, that he was Turner; but in my dream, although he appeared faintly familiar, I thought he was an undertaker. I sensed he was burdened with some great sadness, some terrible apprehension. At length, he let out a dreadful sigh, as if he could no longer put off the fatal moment, and began to whistle.

As though in response, a girl - so white, so dazzlingly white I could not look at her - rose from the lake; and I knew (though how, I cannot say, for no voice spoke) that she had been summoned to accuse her murderer.

I waited. I felt sick. I could not move.

She pointed at me.

As she did so, the Last Trump sounded.

I woke - I half-woke - in my room at the Black Bull. I could still hear the horn: it was coming, quite distinctly, from outside. I went to the window and peered out, but it was quite dark, and I could see nothing. I lit the lamp, and looked at my watch. It was just past five. I had slept for little more than ninety minutes.

I returned to bed and lay down; but still the horn sounded, and in my fuddled condition I could not rid myself of the idea - even as, in some part of my brain, I recognized it as ridiculous - that it was calling me. Knowing I should not sleep again, I got up after a few minutes, and dressed, and went down into the street.

I cannot account for my behaviour during the next hour, save by saying that it was as if I were simultaneously awake and asleep. My waking self knew that I was in Otley; that the storm had blown itself out overnight, leaving the cobbles wet and shiny, and tearing great rents in the clouds, through which appeared a scattering of stars; that this was the cause of the shimmering black expanse I saw before me; and that the noise I heard was made by a mortal agent, who almost certainly did not even know I existed, and was blowing his horn for some rational reason (though I could not guess what it was) that had nothing to do with me at all. And yet, at the same time, I was still in my dream; and the black expanse was the dark lake; and the horn was speaking to me alone, and drawing me, for good or ill, towards my destiny.

I could not see the pied piper; but I could hear him clearly enough, making his way through a tangle of small streets to the east. As I set off in pursuit, lights appeared in bedroom windows to either side of me, as if to confirm that I had chosen the right direction, and to show me the path ahead. After a few minutes, however, I realized that the sound of the horn was growing fainter; and when, at length, I came out in a broad thoroughfare, it had become so distant that I could no longer say with any certainty where it was coming from, or whether I must go left or right to follow it. My waking voice said: You have lost him; go back to bed; but to my dreaming self it seemed evident that the horn had brought me here for a purpose (for there are no accidents in the world of dreams), and I at once looked about to see if I could discover what it might be...

Customer Reviews

Gripped by the desire to go and read something else
"Read 50 pages and you will be gripped," promises the endorsement from Allan Massie on the front cover of The Dark Clue. A cautious approval, which provokes the immediate thought: "That's a lot of pages to get through without being gripped." And after I'd read the required 50 pages, I checked my level of gripped-ness and thought "Nope, nothing yet."
Then 100 pages. Still nothing. 150 pages - "Hey, something's bound to happen soon!" But no. The novel is divided into three books and it was only really in the last one that the narrative suddenly put its ears back, bucked and bolted off into hectic melodrama.

This recreation of the Victorian sensation genre tracks the protagonist's decline from Pooterish second-rate artist to obsessed would-be biographer of Turner, his descent into madness resulting from his attempts not just to emulate, but to become, his subject. The early parts of the book adhere to a pattern: one of the two main characters arranges to visit someone who knew Turner, travels to meet them, describes in great detail how they are admitted to the person's house, describes in even greater detail what the room is like, interviews them and leaves, having discovered that Turner was... a bit odd.

I was impressed by the style of writing, which is characterised by a careful choice of words and an eye for detail. This was what kept me reading through the slow, lengthy build-up. There is a vibrant quality to the description that makes places and people easy to envisage. There is not, however, enough distinction between the narrative voices of Walter Hartright and Marian Halcombe, so that if you haven't picked up the book for a few days, it is easy to forget whose letter or journal you are reading.

In the last of the three books, the melodrama takes off with gusto and the novel finally comes close to being "gripping", but I felt that the pace could have been intensified more gradually and with more anticipatory tension (not least sexual tension between the two main characters, which could have added to the first and second books). The racy conclusion is an enjoyable read and lives up to its genre, but as a successor to Wilkie Collins, I'm afraid Wilson is left way behind by Sarah Waters.

Dark deep pastiche
This novel follows the path of Walter Hartwright, artist and would-be biographer of JMW Turner RA. Told through a collection of letters, journal entries and other notes, this tracks the story of an artist endeavouring to uncover and record the life of Turner. What becomes clear is that Turner himself is an enigma of profound proportions. Widely acknowledged as the principal landscape artist of his day (and probably the best artist ever produced by this country), Turner's paintings betray a degree of darkness that ultimately disturbs. As Hartwright gathers anecdote and evidence of Turner, a picture emerges of a man who's secrecy encourages missunderstanding. Ultimately Hartwright's inability to unravel the mystery of Turner and his past drives him from a rather benign and bumbling Victorian stereotyped gentlemen into a depraved and disturbed madman. A very well constructed novel with plenty of Wilkie Colins style period feel. Ultimately, however, the reasons for Hartwright's decline remain a little unclear. If you like Victorian semi-goth pastiche, you would probably be better off reading Charles Palliser

Is Art the imitation of Life or vice versa?
This is an ambitiously conceived and well executed work, interweaving the lives of real and imagined characters. It's premise is that the principal characters in The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins are affected by their subsequent involvement of one of their number in the acceptance of a commission to write a life of J M W Turner, the English artist. Using a range of the literary devices familair from Victorian fiction such as extracts from the letters, diaries and notebooks of the protagonists, the author successfully creates pyschological and sexual tensions which are convincing in their effects on the lives of the principal characters. Much historical fiction is only costume melodrama. James Wilson is a good enough writer to avoid such pitfalls and has created a work that, although it is a pastiche of Victorian literature in the same vein as for example "The Quincunx" by Charles Palliser, is nonetheless well above the level of being simply "an enjoyable read".