Nightworld

by Brian Carter

The badgers' Nightworld on the South Devon coast is a secret place, washed by storms and starlight ... a world of solitary beauty and mystery - and great danger.

For the badger baiters, with their acrid man-smell, have discovered Big Sett. Their vicious dogs and brutal traps bring bitter pain and a vision of death to the brave badger sow Aspen, to wise old Hawscrag and their fellow sett-dwellers.

But the badgers will discover that not all men are evil, as other, kinder humans intervene to help them in their bloody and heroic struggle ...

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

Reviews

[Casimir Laski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brian Carter’s third xenofiction novel, Nightworld, marks a return to the mythic tradition, centering around a group of badgers living on the southeastern English coastline shortly after the Second World War. The animals live in fear of a group of local humans who engage in the ancient sport of badger-baiting, by which the creatures are dragged from their dens, saddled with chains or leg-hold traps, and then pitted against dogs in fights to the death—a rural custom that Carter himself viciously condemns in the introduction.

Like A Black Fox Running, focalization is divided between the perspectives of the badgers themselves and a number of local humans, among them Frank Rapson, a prominent townsman and avid badger-baiter, nicknamed “Strawberry” for a distinctive pink birthmark on his face; David Garrison, a wildlife painter whose only son Neil was killed in the final months of the war, and whose wife is currently battling tuberculosis in a Swiss sanitarium; and Billy and Sheena, a pair of semi-romantically involved preteens who spend much of their time roaming the rugged coastline and getting into typical adolescent trouble. When the local badger-baiting club begins encroaching on Garrison’s land, which contains a number of setts, the painter and the two children form a tenuous alliance to protect the creatures from Rapson’s persecution, and end up developing an understanding and companionship that crosses the chasm of their age and class differences.

Nightworld features all the hallmarks readers will have come to expect from a Brian Carter novel—rich, immersive prose, concerns with mortality and the fragility of life, deemphasis of man’s central place within the world, conciliatory exploration of English class divides, and interrogation of rural working-class attitudes towards nature—and while it doesn’t manage to reach the heights of A Black Fox Running, the author’s decision to return to the mythic character of his debut strengthens not only his condemnation of the cruelty of badger baiting, but his transcendental approach to portraying existence from myriad angles without giving undue precedence to any one of them. [8/10]

[Corvin Sometimes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Nightworld. I thought it had a strong animal rights message at first (albeit in a somewhat subtle way) but that quickly descended into much flip-flopping and inconsistencies of the characters’ values and actions. One minute they’re saving hawk eggs from being stolen and the next they go and steal seagull eggs to sell to people to eat. They fight hunters to stop them from killing badgers and then go fishing.
They say things like, “Even as a child I never felt at ease watching animals performing in a circus or standing around bored in a zoo. Organising nature for our amusement seems almost as bad as deliberately pushing a creature through misery into death for similar reasons.”, “I know you care, mister. But you eat animals, don’t you? - sheep, pigs, cows, bits of ‘em anyway. There’s a slaughter-house in Mary’s Haven. It’s an awful place. Awful.” and “Animals aren’t things or toys or distractions. They live under our mercy, and that’s a hell of a responsibility”.
But then the characters’ actions don’t fully align with any of this. I was hoping they would have a moment where it all ‘clicked’ as the story went on but that never happened.

It’s just another case of humans picking and choosing what animals are ‘ok’ to abuse and what ones aren’t, when there aren’t any discernible traits that make one species more deserving of life and respect than the other.

There was also some casual racism in this that had no purpose being in there whatsoever. It seemed to just be thrown in for the sake of it.

Having said all of that, I did find the story informative in terms of badger hunting and baiting itself. I never knew it was such a big problem and how far the cruelty really went, I suppose because we don’t have badgers in my country. Learning about what they go through was very eye-opening and it’s so sad to think this still happens in abundance today. The depiction of RSPCA doing absolutely nothing to stop it in the book was depressingly realistic too.

I liked that the badgers had their own spirituality and views on death, god, creationism and why bad things happen to them. It felt very reminiscent of Watership Down in that way, though I felt the lore was somewhat lacking in comparison.
I wish we got to spend more time with the badgers and got to know their personalities better. I had a lot more fun hanging out with them than the confusing humans.

[Lone Wolf · Rating 2 out of 5]

‘Nightworld’ is the story of a group of badgers and their human neighbours, which include both badger-baiters and wildlife-lovers. It’s slightly better than the other books I’ve read by this author (both of which were pretty poor), but I dislike his description-heavy and plot-light style of writing. He also seems very reluctant to use commas and question marks, and there were a few typos such as “involuntairly,” and “lamp” in place of “lamb.” The animals are rather too anthropomorphic, for example weeping like humans, and in his foreword the author claims that badgers are “Britain’s most persecuted wild creature.” I think rats and mice might disagree!