Product Description

Benedick Hunter is a man who has lost everything. A failed actor and divorced father on the verge of a nervous breakdown, his life takes on a new direction when he finds a book of his mother's in which real people and their stories are strangely intertwined with traditional fairy-tales. In 1965, Laura, an American illustrator of children's books, committed suicide in Primrose Hill after Benedick's father left her for another woman. Her son can remember nothing about her, but the fairy-tales and their tantalising illustrations convince him that his own life is in some way echoing and repeating hers. Hunter embarks on a bizarre and darkly comic quest to discover who his mother really was and why she died. Haunted by guilt, by the consequences of his own erratic behaviour, and by his impossible children, Hunter struggles with the terrible and the absurd. Hunter's obsession takes him back into the London of the early 1960s, and across the Atlantic to New York and the magical yet sinister landscape of North Carolina. What was the connection between Laura's creativity and her death? Why do some people portray her as evil and others as good? Hunter's journey takes him to the heart of his own nature, of modern fatherhood, of manic depression and of the elusive nature of fairy tales.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #433035 in Books
• Published on: 2001-07-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 276 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Fairy tales are stuffed to the brim with dark woods--dark woods in which dwarves and hermits lurk, trees bleed when struck with an axe and princes and princesses are tested to within a hair's breadth of their lives. When Benedick Hunter finds a book of fairy tales written by his mother he knows there are dark woods within but is unaware of just how dangerous fairy tales can be. In A Dark Wood is his journey to discover his mother's secrets, the truths behind her stories and why she committed suicide when he was still a child. This is also a journey to find out more about himself, his "amorphous moods" and the "stink of failure" that plagues him following a divorce and a long spell of unemployment.

In A Dark Wood unravels through a matrix of fairy tales and half-forgotten memories leading from London in the 1960s to present-day New York and the white verandaed houses of North Carolina (hemmed in, of course, by dark woods). It's Amanda Craig's fourth novel, following the acclaimed A Vicious Circle, which is currently being developed for BBC television. Craig confirms with this novel that she is a voice to listen to, a bold writer who is not frightened to deliver a harrowing read. That said, In A Dark Wood has a lighter side and is shot through with a magical feel--as all good fairy tales should be.--Jane Honey

Review
''A book within a book, a rich plot with plenty of on-the-edge-of-your-seat suspense, an abundance of quirky but believable characters, a dual-location setting and even an unexpected twist at the end...an elegant anti-fairy tale for adults.' Daily Express 'An eerie novel full of fairy-tale menace beguilingly told and hypnotic.' Independent on Sunday

With a marriage in ruins and two small children literally driving him mad, Benedick Hunter (the unemployed actor at the heart of Craig's compelling fourth novel) embarks on a quest to learn more about his mother, Laura, an American-born children's illustrator who committed suicide 35 years earlier. Spurred on by clues that Laura's work mirrors her life, Benedick visits former colleagues and neighbours of his parents; then, with his son in tow, he flies to New York and on to North Carolina, where a threatening landscape of dense woods and alligators seems eerily familiar. While this is in itself an engaging narrative, Craig's real achievement is the skill with which she enters Benedick's head to anatomize the phases of his nervous breakdown. The reader follows his progress - from his painfully funny outburst at an audition to extraordinary spending-sprees in New York and Charleston - without the experience ever seeming merely voyeuristic. Retaining sympathy for Benedick even when he is at his most unreasonable, she demonstrates that the worlds of the child and the manic depressive are both touchingly and comically close. Fittingly, perhaps, and in the manner of the coded fairy-stories that pepper the novel, the fictional details of Laura Hunter's biography resemble that of a real-life enigma, Sylvia Plath. An American who ended her life in Primrose Hill in the 1960s, she polarized opinion among those left behind, and her death followed her husband's departure with another woman. This strategy is characteristic of a mordant humour that finds Ayckbournian comedy in Benedick's half-hearted suicide attempts, and - with a pun on Stevie Smith's famous poem, describes his bachelor life as not drowning but microwaving. Like a matrioshka doll, In a Dark Wood marvellously hides secrets within secrets. Review by STEPHEN KNIGHT. (Kirkus UK)

A seething, hollowed-out, soon-to-be-divorced actor is obsessed by his dead mother's fairy tales. Laura Perry, the mother of narrator Benedick Hunter, was an American in 1960s London and a children's book illustrator of some repute when she hanged herself after her handsome columnist husband left her for another woman. Benedick, nearly 40, mostly unemployed, and suspended by an emotional thread after his own novelist wife left him (with their two small children) to live with her posh publisher, stumbles again upon his mother's North of Nowhere stories with their eerie, haunting illustrations. In his leisurely state of self-loathing and despair, he sets out to unearth the true story behind her suicide by following the shadowy lead of her grim fairy tales of innocent, virtuous girls lured into the dark wood (Craig acknowledges her debt to the work of Ellen Handler Spitz, Alison Lurie, and Marina Warner). His reckless quest takes him and his son Cosmo to the wilderness of the States, to New York City, and to the original woods of "the Carolinas," where Craig can let fly her criticisms of American obesity, automatic cars, and fast food. While Benedick's children are scene-stealers, the younger women in his life, including his wife and the predatory singles who call him relentlessly, are shredded maliciously. Benedick's tempestuous moods are effectively, even amusingly, delineated, and despite his swampy self-pity (his successful father is "a wicked old bastard who has never loved me"), the reader ends up cheering for him when he meets his charming southern cousin Rose, a dead-ringer for his mother. Disastrously, Benedick learns that he suffers from manic-depression, but his bad moods, with medication, vanish like magic-rendering most disappointing the requisite hospital ending of this neatly written emotional saga. Britisher Craig's US debut is a perspicacious relationship drama, with some nicely researched academic touches for the literary set. (Kirkus Reviews)

Independent on Sunday
'An eerie novel full of fairy-tale menace beguilingly told and hypnotic.'

Customer Reviews

Light and Dark
Benedick Hunter is having what at first appears to be a middle-aged crisis. He's an actor who hasn't had any steady work recently. His wife is divorcing him and he bickers constantly with his pompous father. He finds little joy from taking care of his imaginative, but demanding young children. Benedick lives off from the small amount of royalties from his mother's children's books. After rediscovering one of these collection of fairy tales he begins reading the stories for deeper personal meanings. He's compelled to follow a trail of his mother's old friends who are scattered over Britain and America like a trail of breadcrumbs. The mysteries contained in her subversive fables lead him to his mother's childhood home and the truth about his family that has been hidden from him. Gradually he learns that his alienation from society and erratic behaviour has its roots in a mental illness. But he has to descend into the darkest psychological depths in order to learn how to live with this disorder.

In this beautiful and moving novel, Craig manages to write very convincingly about a man's perspective of the world. Benedick's personal aspirations are clouded by despair in a way that prevents him from also appreciating all the loving people he has in his life. Unfortunately, he has also inherited a lot of pain and bitterness from his mother's life, many of the facts of which have been hidden from him. We are also given many funny details about the cultural differences between America and England. What the author also does so extraordinarily well is show a blend of light and dark in this central character's psychology. He does a number of detestable things. Yet we are given insight into them and understand they are acts of desperation brought about through a mental illness he can‘t control. Craig pays tribute to the important and complex work of Angela Carter who was dubbed the Fairy Godmother of British fiction. She does this by insisting that fairy tales have a much deeper meaning than what appears on the surface. The raucous emotions and terrible violence they depict just may be a greater reflection of reality than we care to admit. The psychological demons which hound many people are indeed more terrifying than the creatures who lurk in the dark woods of fairy tales. By blending the story of Benedick’s travels with a number of creative fairy tales, Craig gives us a lot of insight into this while producing an enthralling story.

I went into "A Dark Wood" and came out much wiser.
The "Bookworms in Brussels" (a small reading group of seven women - and five different nationalities) went into "In A Dark Wood" in the deepest dark of December and came out much wiser, superbly entertained and finally ... relieved! (but I'm not allowed to say why).

The story is perfectly convincing, as are the characters. The contrast between every day's trials and tribulations, parenthood (all the mothers marvelled at the description of the two irresistible little monsters!), madness & drama and the fairy tales and poems "... and when your heart begins to fail it's like a ship without a sail..." works beautifully. The narrative is witty and full of insight, the fairy tales enchanting, the characters, whether loveable or despicable, are all very vivid. We suffered, and suffered with poor Benedick, and it is a great compliment to the author that - unless you are familiar with manic-depressive cases - you are, literally, kept in the dark until the very end. Do read it!

Inger Løvschall (a Dane in Brussels)

wonderful! the pace of a thriller, exquisitely written
This is a wonderful, wonderful novel. Not only is it exquistely well-written, it is a kind of detective story that you can't put down. It's about finding your way out of despair and depression - the "dark wood" - into life and hope again. The narrator, Benedick, is an actor and at first so self-pitying and unpleasant that I was nearly put off reading more. Don't be! Because not only do you learn to love him and pity him (and sometimes laugh at him)but what happens to him is amazing. I don't want to give the plot away, but it gets more and more exciting (and creepy) especially once he takes his small son to America with him and discovers why his mother killed herself. Apart from being a wonderful story, this is a novel about stories - about our need for them, and also how they can mislead us. Craig interweaves fairy-stories with the narrative, a little as AS Byatt does in 'Possession'but more interestingly. An enchanting, mesmerising novel. I thoroughly recommend it.