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Dark-Land: Memoir of a Secret Childhood
"Put this beautiful book on your shelf between Frank Conroy's Stop-Time and Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life."
—William Giraldi, author of The Hero's Body
This powerful memoir from poet Kevin Hart traces his difficult childhood as a "backward boy" in a poor part of London, a disorienting move to tropical Australia, and the secrets he and his family kept from one another.
Memoir of a Secret Childhood is Kevin Hart’s searing, yet at times hilarious, narrative of his first thirteen years. It is a story of survival and transformation, of deception and recovery, and it passes from a frightening childhood in the East-End of London to a new and bewildering life in sub-tropical Australia. Throughout, Hart draws on John Bunyan’s evocation of “Dark-Land” in Pilgrim’s Progress, the place Valiant-for-Truth leaves in order to seek the Celestial City. But Dark-Land is no allegory. We see Hart’s hidden inner life, his family’s penchant for keeping secrets, and their illusions about the nature of their shared past. We see Hart grow from being the despair of his teachers in a rough primary school to experiencing a “conversion” in a math class in Brisbane, Australia, which turned him into a Christian, a poet, and an academic.
Written in elegant, lucid prose, without a trace of sentimentality, Dark-Land is a memoir of a working-class childhood, a narrative of a migrant, and the story of a convert to Christianity.
—William Giraldi, author of The Hero's Body
This powerful memoir from poet Kevin Hart traces his difficult childhood as a "backward boy" in a poor part of London, a disorienting move to tropical Australia, and the secrets he and his family kept from one another.
Memoir of a Secret Childhood is Kevin Hart’s searing, yet at times hilarious, narrative of his first thirteen years. It is a story of survival and transformation, of deception and recovery, and it passes from a frightening childhood in the East-End of London to a new and bewildering life in sub-tropical Australia. Throughout, Hart draws on John Bunyan’s evocation of “Dark-Land” in Pilgrim’s Progress, the place Valiant-for-Truth leaves in order to seek the Celestial City. But Dark-Land is no allegory. We see Hart’s hidden inner life, his family’s penchant for keeping secrets, and their illusions about the nature of their shared past. We see Hart grow from being the despair of his teachers in a rough primary school to experiencing a “conversion” in a math class in Brisbane, Australia, which turned him into a Christian, a poet, and an academic.
Written in elegant, lucid prose, without a trace of sentimentality, Dark-Land is a memoir of a working-class childhood, a narrative of a migrant, and the story of a convert to Christianity.
- GenresMemoir
251 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 11, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 19, 2025
“As I think back over my childhood, I wonder if there were things I missed– remarks, glances, sighs, silences, whispers-that floated on the surface of family life that, if seen or heard properly, would have revealed what my parents kept hidden from me and perhaps even from themselves.” Hart’s motif of hopeless fog is the margarine spread over the scenic views of his childhood, an unreachable place of memory that Hart seems to be explaining that we can only hope to write into as it continues to lurch at and uproot us. The title is an analogue to Pilgrim’s Progress, where “Bunyan spoke of the narrow way that Christian had to take; it ‘lay at the bottom of the Hill (and the name of the going up the side of the Hill is called Difficulty)’.” This image provides a poetic-reliogious anchor in an otherwise bewildering set of events, that is, to the living character, but for the writer, there doesn’t seem to be any sense of curiosity or nostalgia. Hart is resigned to the lost details, but casts the scenes beautifully.
Take when he suddenly is told his young, socially maligned family will be leaving their impoverished existence in London to resettle in Australia. Kevin returns home from school and is sent outside, where he spends the time caring for his tulips in the family garden by pulling aphids of the leaves and putting them in a tin can, which he then incinerates, before being called back into the house by his mother:
“She had reached that condition where one was simply angry because one didn't know what on earth to do. Pauline [Kevin’s sister] had gone to her room. We ate cold leftovers, I had a slice of TV, and went to bed early. Nothing was said about what had been going on. A pall hung over the house for a few days, and I hardly saw Pauline at all. And then I forgot all about it.
A month or so later, when it had become known that the whole family was going to Australia…”
Any sense of motivation toward explanation, a want for “answers,” is pounded down below the incisive details to an impenetrable layer beyond imagery of class, privilege, luck, and circumstance. He’s a poet, stifled by time and social circumstances. There’s a universality to the moments he does (or, maybe is able to?) remember, which are inevitably linked to pain and discomfort– a scalding tin can of aphids, for instance– but also the way we experience time, such as the dreadful nauseous expectation of waning summer vacation and impending school year:
“Once again, I'd be crossing off the days on the calendar, and the last two or three were almost unbearable. The caravan was brim full of excess time, the time that comes only when something is over and done with and one can't move on, knowing that moving on means going into the dark.”
It’s perhaps that these miserable cloaks are our memory handicaps, involuntarily choosing these moments of stark, base clarity over those which may provide philosophical or practical answers. And once we have felt we may have the grasp on it, our excitement is eclipsed by losing it again, not having a place to share it or place it, or not having enough time to reconcile.
“I fear losing the clarity of mind that I have gained. That the window might spring shut again seems unlikely after all these years, but I know people, not much older than I am, who have begun to suffer from one or another form of dementia."
Take when he suddenly is told his young, socially maligned family will be leaving their impoverished existence in London to resettle in Australia. Kevin returns home from school and is sent outside, where he spends the time caring for his tulips in the family garden by pulling aphids of the leaves and putting them in a tin can, which he then incinerates, before being called back into the house by his mother:
“She had reached that condition where one was simply angry because one didn't know what on earth to do. Pauline [Kevin’s sister] had gone to her room. We ate cold leftovers, I had a slice of TV, and went to bed early. Nothing was said about what had been going on. A pall hung over the house for a few days, and I hardly saw Pauline at all. And then I forgot all about it.
A month or so later, when it had become known that the whole family was going to Australia…”
Any sense of motivation toward explanation, a want for “answers,” is pounded down below the incisive details to an impenetrable layer beyond imagery of class, privilege, luck, and circumstance. He’s a poet, stifled by time and social circumstances. There’s a universality to the moments he does (or, maybe is able to?) remember, which are inevitably linked to pain and discomfort– a scalding tin can of aphids, for instance– but also the way we experience time, such as the dreadful nauseous expectation of waning summer vacation and impending school year:
“Once again, I'd be crossing off the days on the calendar, and the last two or three were almost unbearable. The caravan was brim full of excess time, the time that comes only when something is over and done with and one can't move on, knowing that moving on means going into the dark.”
It’s perhaps that these miserable cloaks are our memory handicaps, involuntarily choosing these moments of stark, base clarity over those which may provide philosophical or practical answers. And once we have felt we may have the grasp on it, our excitement is eclipsed by losing it again, not having a place to share it or place it, or not having enough time to reconcile.
“I fear losing the clarity of mind that I have gained. That the window might spring shut again seems unlikely after all these years, but I know people, not much older than I am, who have begun to suffer from one or another form of dementia."
December 19, 2025
I seem to remain stubbornly ambivalent when it comes to memoir. I think it's an invaluable exercise, can rise to a practice of worship in remembrance and attention; I want everyone to do it. I also think it is inherently and should almost always remain a private thing. Shared with those who enter the reflections, whose character populates the private world God has entrusted to you, sure.
I don't think for a moment books are good or valuable only insofar as I can "relate" to them, or easily enter and recognize their worlds. But if you're going to invite me to enter a world, especially that of your inner and early life, I'd ask for a bit more editing. Towards the end Hart reveals the chronicling of his inner life has been a morning exercise for several months. Everything that comes at you as you tread those ghostly circuits will seem important, precisely because it's remained with you through the years. And it is important, in that sense! But it does not necessarily important to me, a third-party reader, and may not be thematically helpful to the purposes for which you're sharing these memories.
I have admit I did, finally, start to enjoy the book only when I did begin to relate to it, about 3/4 of the way through, when he has his algebraic epiphany, and the whole world opens to him in new ways. And Hart's own reflections on what all this spelunking in personal history are pleasantly ambivalent, in the way of poets.
I don't think for a moment books are good or valuable only insofar as I can "relate" to them, or easily enter and recognize their worlds. But if you're going to invite me to enter a world, especially that of your inner and early life, I'd ask for a bit more editing. Towards the end Hart reveals the chronicling of his inner life has been a morning exercise for several months. Everything that comes at you as you tread those ghostly circuits will seem important, precisely because it's remained with you through the years. And it is important, in that sense! But it does not necessarily important to me, a third-party reader, and may not be thematically helpful to the purposes for which you're sharing these memories.
I have admit I did, finally, start to enjoy the book only when I did begin to relate to it, about 3/4 of the way through, when he has his algebraic epiphany, and the whole world opens to him in new ways. And Hart's own reflections on what all this spelunking in personal history are pleasantly ambivalent, in the way of poets.
February 18, 2025
One of the best memoirs I've ever read (and please look at that cover photo--this ain't the Hollywood actor we're talking about). Hart grew up in the East End of London in the 1960s and 70s before his family emigrated to Australia. The work focuses on that rough part of London, terrible schools, and seemingly indifferent parents.
Hart has a remarkable memory and sense of place. His descriptions outstrip even the rich color of a certain Poplar-based midwife-centered BBC drama. Obviously he's a mature man writing about things he probably didn't fully understand at the time, and yet he can write as though we're living his life as a child, not a theology professor (which he is now, at Duke Divinity School). And his switch from a helpless student to a gifted one is almost (or perhaps truly?) supernatural.
The move to Australia is less enthralling--although I'd love to read a second work about his conversion and development as an international scholar and poet.
Hart has a remarkable memory and sense of place. His descriptions outstrip even the rich color of a certain Poplar-based midwife-centered BBC drama. Obviously he's a mature man writing about things he probably didn't fully understand at the time, and yet he can write as though we're living his life as a child, not a theology professor (which he is now, at Duke Divinity School). And his switch from a helpless student to a gifted one is almost (or perhaps truly?) supernatural.
The move to Australia is less enthralling--although I'd love to read a second work about his conversion and development as an international scholar and poet.
January 14, 2025
"Dark Land" is a powerful memoir. Hart vividly describes his life experiences, making the book memorable and engaging.
One of the best books I've read.
One of the best books I've read.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews