The Dark Corner

by Mark Powell

A troubled Episcopal priest and would-be activist, Malcolm Walker has failed twice over—first in an effort to shock his New England congregants out of their complacency and second in an attempt at suicide. Discharged from the hospital and haunted by images of the Iraq War and Abu Ghraib, he heads home to the mountains of northwestern South Carolina, the state’s “dark corner,” where a gathering storm of private grief and public rage awaits him.
    Malcolm’s life soon converges with people as damaged in their own ways as he is: his older brother, Dallas, a onetime college football star who has made a comfortable living in real-estate development but is now being drawn ever more deeply into an extremist militia; his dying father, Elijah, still plagued by traumatic memories of Vietnam and the death of his wife; and Jordan Taylor, a young, drug-addicted woman who is being ruthlessly exploited by Dallas’s viperous business partner, Leighton Clatter. As Malcolm tries to restart his life, he enters into a relationship with Jordan that offers both of them fleeting glimpses of heaven, even as hellish realities continue to threaten them.
    In The Dark Corner, Mark Powell confronts crucial issues currently shaping our culture: environmentalism and the disappearance of wild places, the crippling effects of wars past and present, drug abuse, and the rise of right-wing paranoia. With his skillful plotting, feel for place, and gift for creating complex and compelling characters, Powell evokes a world as vivid and immediate as the latest news cycle, while at the same time he offers a nuanced reflection on timeless themes of violence, longing, redemption, faith, and love.

Genres: Fiction, Southern

305 pages, Paperback

First published October 30, 2012

About the author

Mark Powell is the author of six novels. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences, and in 2014 was a Fulbright Fellow to Slovakia. In 2009, he received the Chaffin Award for contributions to Appalachian literature. He holds degrees from Yale Divinity School, the University of South Carolina, and The Citadel. He lives in the mountains of North Carolina, where he teaches at Appalachian State University.

Reviews

[S.W. Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rarely does a book get under my skin like Powell's Dark Corner. After reading his first two novels, I was expecting the same simple elegance and beautiful craftsmanship; however, Powell's talents had moved beyond my juvenile comprehension and limited understanding. The book left me in my own "dark corner." Enter Charles White, an accomplished Appalachian writer and Goodreads author, who took the time to answer my silly questions and teach me to appreciate a Southern Gothic Novel. Powell writes beyond the literary agent's red pen and the cookbook recommendations of the Writer's Digest gurus. The light has snapped on in the "dark corner" of my closed mind---the prodigal reader has returned and humbly asks for forgiveness. Thanks again, Charles, I'll let Mark know how passionately you defended his honor and I've already ordered your book on Amazon.

Update: There's an terrific section where Dallas is fanatically working out and the answer to all his questions is MORE WEIGHT. Of course, this refers to Arthur Miller's The Crucible and the torture technique of "pressing" in which "more weight" is applied until the accused witch confesses or dies. Ironically, Dallas is torturing himself. Powell may be using this "Crucible" reference to emphasize the literary technique in which characters are placed in an inescapable situation and forced through conflict. The right-wing hysteria and religious irreverence described in The Dark Corner is similar to the Salem Witch Trials (and allegorically McCarthyism). I completely missed the connection on my first read but that section was clearly my favorite.

[Denise Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant.

[Kirk Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

ALL of the right elements. None of the right emotions. Pulse: flat line.

[Michael Cody · Rating 5 out of 5]

I personally found there to be something about this work akin to that of Flannery O'Connor. The novel's South-verging-on-Appalachia setting is haunted by ghosts and religion and varying degrees of madness. Similar to my experience with O'Connor, I found this an engrossing story in spite of the fact that I didn't really like any of the characters. The romantic in me pulled for Malcolm and Jordan, but all along I knew that their stories--and their story--were too tortured to recover. And yet I haven't in a while pushed myself this way to finish a novel not being read on a deadline for class. Definitely a good read.

[Megan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gritty, raw, rife with sexual content, drugs, and alcohol, The Dark Corner is brutally honest in its exploration of the broken psyche and thorough in its dedication to its setting. The title is apt in more ways than you may at first conceive--be prepared to explore the dark corners of your own mind.

[Ed · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aptly named for a forgotten part of Appalachia, right wingers are staging a war and this book captures all the contradictions. A lot of the substance is subtext so it’s a little hard to follow for readers accustomed to literal storytelling.

[Joan L Huffman MD · Rating 5 out of 5]

A balance between good and evil: which will prevail?

[Joyce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Park Powell keeps making me believe he may be the next great one. This is his third and best novel. Atmospheric and poetic, is it another portrayal of modern Appalachia as American microcosm, of the eternal search for home, for healing of wounds, for the ways in which people damage one another at home and in war. Unrelentingly dark and rather a bit too testosterone injected, perhaps, but powerful. I'd like to see a tiny molecule of humor amidst the darkness, a bit more depth to women characters. Atmospheric, poetic, dark and beautiful.

[MaryAnn · Rating 2 out of 5]

The title identifies a geographic area of upstate South Carolina, but also refers to brothers Malcolm and Dallas, who have their own dark corners. Other major characters are intertwined in the darkness, including Jordan, a young female drug addict who becomes involved with Malcolm and his brother's business partner. Suffice it to say that this is a dark and depressing story, with few, if any, bright spots. The writing is sometimes clear, sometimes more stream of consciousness, which made it hard for me to follow. Not my favorite of the Appalachian novels.

[Jeff Koloze · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting novel of a failed suicide struggling to find faith. Since the characters are not orthodox Catholics who know how to respond to life’s misfortunes, the novel is an insightful look into how some backwoods secularized persons like the failed suicide handle the meaning of their lives. You won’t find the magnificent styles of Walker Percy or Flannery O’Connor here. Moreover, there were too many sex scenes. Sex here, sex there, sex everywhere. If the main character was striving more to get laid than find God, then reading this novel is overall a waste of time.

[Mike Coleman · Rating 1 out of 5]

Prostitutes, greedy land developers and their proudly bitchy wives, a minister who tried to off himself by drinking antifreeze. The characters in this supposedly serious, gritty novel about the New South come off as caricatures to me. The cycle repeats itself--there is an improbable scene meant to move the plot along, then a description of kudzu, honeysuckle, fields of red clay, and then everyone sits down and has another drink. Sordid Lives was a lot more fun.

[James Hill "Trae" Welborn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lives up to its name, as most of the narrative takes place in the upper northwestern portion of S.C., but more than that, most of said action is indeed engaging very dark themes coursing through the human psyche and experience, namely the never-ending struggle between virtue and vice, perceptions of good and evil, conceptions of heaven and hell, here and in the hereafter.

[Wanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book is as dark as the corner where despair and a Greek/Appalachian fatalism permeates lives from the poorest to the wealthiest. Here family is a dark pool to drown in, and yet in sacrifice, a kind of grace. One of the most beautifully written novels I have read in years.

[April · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's not called The Dark Corner for nothing...