Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #229140 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

Review
Praise for Nicola Barker: 'Dazzling!She celebrates the complexity of human experience.' The Times 'Insanely inventive. Her vision of a marginal Britain populated by drifters and desperados is fired by a comic energy that dances on the edge of self-combustion.' Guardian 'Barker's eccentrics are the stuff of pure farce. And they allow her to reinvent, joyously, the cogs, gears and mechanics of the genre. She knows, as Wodehouse also knew, how to rev up the language, do baroque variations on a phrase, even break into a kind of poetry.' New York Times

The hip, the square and the crazy trip over their pasts and each other in this boisterous latest from Barker (Clear, 2005, etc.), a finalist for the Man Booker Prize. The primary focus of the novel, set in Ashford, England, near the Channel Tunnel, is on two families. There is a father, Beede, and his son, Kane. Kane is a cool prescription-drug dealer. Beede is stuffy, civic-minded and pedantic; he supervises a hospital laundry. They tolerate each other warily; their one great crisis occurred when Kane's mother (Beede's divorced wife) died painfully after a botched suicide attempt. The other family consists of Isidore (or Dory), his wife, Elen, and their five-year-old son, Fleet. Dory, who pretends to be German, is a mess, narcoleptic and paranoid. He suffers dangerous "episodes" of which he has no memory. At times he is possessed by a medieval jester called John, who once burned down a barn with people inside. Little Fleet is weird too (he knows about John). The sane one is Elen, who radiates calm and commonsense. She's a podiatrist who has treated Beede and Kane and is the link between the families. There is a third family, the Broads, a collection of lowlifes. Foremost among them is punk, anorexic Kelly; she has a big mouth but a good heart. The novel generates heat but no light. The hijinks (searching in a haunted forest for Dory, for example) are enhanced by playful typography and counterpointed by erudite riffs on, among other things, similarities between the medieval and modern worlds. The past weighs heavily, even on the Broads. The questions pile up but go unanswered; projected climaxes (a rooftop encounter between Dory and John) fizzle out. As in her previous work, Barker is still seductive, idiosyncratic and infuriating. "Everything is arbitrary" says a character who is the designated truth-teller. That's quite a cop-out. If you go with the flow and reconcile yourself to the lack of plot, you'll find plenty to enjoy. (Kirkus Reviews)

Scotland on Sunday
'...an ambitious, daring, delightful and compelling work...it is
fearfully gripping...'

Susan Mansfield
'Her books are experimental in style, endlessly inventive.'

Customer Reviews

Magnificent
I'm not going to go into long plot explanations - others have done it already far better than I could. I just want to say that this is a magnificent novel. I've not read any Nicola Barker before, and I was just blown away by the sheer audacity and exuberance of her prose. Yes, this book is long, but within a few pages I was completely gripped, barely able to put it down as it built up an exquisite dramatic tension. Barker develops, layer by layer, scene by scene, an almost anarchic assortment of characters, throws them together and shows us the unpredictable results. It's an almost cinematic approach to novel-writing, and makes for a demanding read - you work hard to piece together the clues scattered in her narrative - but it's totally engaging and thoroughly rewarding.

Not for a long time have I come across a writer with such a playful feel for language. Her observations, too, are startlingly fresh and apt. Yes, the novel does rely heavily on coincidence, but then so did Thomas Hardy. I don't think her aim is to be 'realistic'. We're drawn into a more magical and mysterious version of the 'real' world, and leave the novel both entranced and enriched by the experience.

Stunning
There is a huge amount that is exceptionally good in here, as some other reviewers have stated. However, it certainly is not just humour and history: the book is very poetic and has an extraordinarily poignant and, I think, topical ending. A truly brilliant achievement that is way up there with "Wide Open".

Big, but not clever...
Prior to reading Darkmans, I knew of Barker by reputation - and by the awards she has recieved and/or been nominated for - but was not familiar with her actual works. If Darkmans is anything to go by, I'd been lucky until now, and certainly won't be seeking to get any better acquainted with this particular author. By its rear-cover blurb, intriguing cover design and faintly irritating title, Darkmans looked and sounded intriguing - and the sheer level of critical praise that's apparantly been heaped upon it made it a must-read...
...But both the blurb and the acclaim must be for a different book. Darkmans is appalling. The plot is virtually non-existent, and what little of it is in evidence is unravelled sporadically and nonsensically via a neverending slew of dull, lifeless exchanges between some of the most laughably implausible and unlikeable characters ever committed to print. Which would be forgivable if Barker's prose and dialogue was anywhere near as clever as she thinks it is - but it's not. The dialogue is clumsy and inept (and bears precisely zero resemblance to actual human interaction) and the writing on the whole is crippled by a comically pointless reliance on parenthesis, equally inane use of spacing - mostly in order to interject monosyllabic thought processes - and a general misuse of grammar, punctuation and meaning that makes reading this book an experience of unparralleled frustration. It's odd that the author has gone to such lengths to remove any entertainment value from this novel, or indeed anything that would make this a pleasurable reading experience. The only use I can see for this book, is of a prime example of how not to write.
I must confess, I gave up on it about halfway through (making this one of only three or four books I have ever given up on), so maybe I'm missing some grand revelation or point that would have made sense of it all. Frankly, I don't care; this book has rendered me numb and disheartened...and perhaps a little bit angry.