Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #124292 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-17
• Binding: Paperback
• 848 pages

The Scotsman
'...we're lucky to be alive at the same time as her...I hope she wins the Booker Prize.'

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

A large dose of life
I was, not uniquely, I suspect, left a little miffed upon finishing this novel - don't worry, I'm not going to spill plot points all over this review though. This is why I have knocked one star off my rating - I am quite traditional in the sense that I like novels to have some overarcing development across their length, and this seems, essentially, plotless. At least not in the 800+ pages present; Darkmans runs in a different timeframe - like evolution, or continental drift.
Not that it feels slow, however. I found myself caught up in the intersecting lives of the vibrant characters, and Barker's elegant writing. It plays as a social drama, with a twist that many of the main characters may or may not be possessed by a 500 year old jester, and those who aren't often have their own mysterious agenda.
You will finish this novel with more questions than answers, but that, I hope, is the intention!

There's a good book in there somewhere
A strange book - really a jumble that creates the illusion of being clever. The dialogue, where everyone's an expert and interested in any aspect of history, just doesn't ring true - try to picture watching it in a film and it becomes laughably unbelievable and the whole "overwritten" feel of it deliver a book that takes forever to get started, introduces far too many shallow characters (what on earth did the chap with the lost daughter and the girl cutting the ties off trees add to anything?). I did find it a page turner, however, because I wanted to find out more about John but ultimately Darkmans just left me with a load of loose ends. This really needed a decent editor getting to grips with it!

What a waste of time!
First of all, the author's writing style has to be one of the most annoying styles I've ever encountered. Despite being a voracious reader (and I've read quite a few odd books, so I'm not opposed to something a bit different), I almost gave up after a few pages because the style is so frustrating. She uses all these parentheses to explain metaphors as if we're too dumb to figure out what she's saying. And every time a character is confused she leaves big empty spaces and writes "EH!?" or "WHA!?" It's just obnoxious. I persevered and the book does pick up steam, especially towards the end, but there's no point to it all. The plot seemed interesting and I was looking forward to the conclusion, except that there is no conclusion. It's a total cop-out. It's like she came up with some pretty cool ideas but didn't have the talent to pull it all together into something coherent. There's basically a Scooby-dooish bit towards the end where one character thinks he knows what's going on and the other character tries to just explain it all away by saying it's just all a coincidence. Was THAT supposed to be the explanation? Give me a break. That might cut it if there wasn't a bunch of supernatural stuff going on with a ghost or spirit possessing different characters. Or is the author just trying desperately to be "deep"? To me, this book is akin to one of those modern art exhibitions by Damien Hirst or Tracy Emin - so-called "artists" with little talent who've conned people into thinking their trite junk is worth something. If you like that kind of thing, maybe you'd like this book. But all in all it left me feeling like I'd just wasted my time.