Dark Like Under

by Alice Chadwick

A day in an English school in the 1980s unfolds in the aftermath of the death of a beloved teacher, Mr Ardennes. But while students and teachers grapple with this sudden loss, normal life, as it must, continues. Lessons, flirtations, arguments. The clock ticks on.


At the heart of it all is Tin. Burning bright with defiance, feared and adored in equal measure – and potentially betrayed by best friend Robin and boyfriend Jonah. As the heat of the baking hot day intensifies, rivalries and hormones simmer, and old secrets surface.


Set against a backdrop of strikes and economic unrest, Dark Like Under is at the same time languorous with sun-soaked, rural beauty. Thrumming with life, this luminous debut captures the promise and risk of late adolescence and is a profound exploration of friendship, loneliness and grief.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, British Literature, Literary Fiction

333 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 6, 2025

Reviews

[Jules · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. beautiful microcosm of teenage experience and summer sweat, twisted with grief and longing and difficulty. Chadwick clips sentences like a bathroom floor haircut: sometimes freshly satisfying, sometimes harder to follow. but if you like the meaty digging, chewing, through parts harder to parse, it's well worth the time.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a quiet little treasure, I loved it. It’s set over the course of a single day - a school day - after a tragedy has occurred. We are introduced to the characters - the students and their teachers - as they try to carry on with the day as usual, with its normal dramas but also with plenty of acknowledgments that it’s not a normal day. I really liked the format of moving through the day and the classes. The school day is meant to be set in 1980, which although a bit before my time at school was a nostalgia trip in some ways - and I thought it quite remarkable how much we could learn about these characters over such a quick time period and come to feel for them and root for them. It’s a moving account of one tragic day and its fleeting passions as well as its deeper currents.

[Neil Challis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Set in a single day in a grammar school in 1980,a loved teacher had died and this I s how the school and the students react, all going about there daily life at school,their relationships and troubles here and at home. How other teachers cope with losing a colleague who was one of the good ones. The question is why had he passed, you are never privy to the life's of those away from the workplace.
Good debut, maybe needed to be shorter to hold your attention better.

[Selma Stearns]

DNF (page 85). I just didn't find the story or characters very interesting, and the writing style was a bit distracting - not for me!

[nin. · Rating 4 out of 5]

straight into the cannon of my favorite books. somebody on here called it a “quiet treasure” and they are so right.

[Bee · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25/5

I received an advanced readers copy of this novel through Edelweiss and the publisher, Biblioasis. This book will be on sale on 6/17/25.

This novel is a slow moving, nuanced character study about a group of students, all misfits and complex in their own ways. It follows them over the course of a 24 hour period of time in which something tragic occurs and effects them all, including teachers at the school which we get perspectives from as well.

Alice Chadwick has a fantastic ability to differentiate the perspectives through her writing. Each character was developed with such a unique mental landscape and background. As the story moves through the 24 hours, we get details of their perspectives and actions that make them feel so undeniably real. An example of this (non spoiler): in one scene we get a detailed description of one character resting their head on their desk at school, pressing their ear to the desktop and listening to the way the sounds warp when they do so. And in this moment, this attention brought to the change in sound felt like a change made in the character's trajectory. The book is full of delicate snippets like this that felt nostalgic, and so vivid.

There are many motifs I enjoyed, especially the relevance of the oppressive heat, and how any time it was woven into the story I could feel myself feeling warm and needing a drink of water. In fact, in nearly every scene the senses are called to with how lush this setting was. The author's writing makes it so easy to imagine the scenery that she is depicting, and she does so in a way that enhances the subtle yet contemplative plot. The plot and the setting could not be separated, and I find that incredible.

I adore books like this. I adore when a novel can make me think about how I know for a fact everyone around me has quirks unique enough to them, just like these characters, and how I want to note them down in my journal to appreciate them.

[A Jamal · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was heading towards a solid 3* review, but the book kept getting more and more‘poetic’ and less readable . The last chapters were soggy and disappointing. It seemed stylistically engaging- a day in the life, in small town England, told kaleidescopically through the voices of students and teachers. Problem is the voice is always the same - a delicate narrator, generously observing this dull school . Bigger problem- a day in the life is just that. One day in a school. You really have to care about the students and teachers because that is all you’re getting. No wider messages. In the end the most interesting thing about the seemingly mysterious Tin is that her name is short for Thomasin. That much I enjoyed. Also the edition, which is why I picked it up in the first place.

[Elizabeth Turner · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this was a good debut but perhaps too long and too many characters. With the number of characters it was really hard to build up any kind of connection with them and there wasn’t a great deal to differentiate them so was hard to follow at times. Tonally it was a nice book but perhaps suffered from being too poetic so the last 100 pages did drag a bit.

[Isabella Hamilton · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit too poetic for my liking, felt like I couldn’t really follow along because I was trying to decipher what was going on every 10 lines. I like that it took place all in one day but defs could’ve been a shorter book. Each individual character and their relationships with each other also could have been developed more if there were just less of them to keep track of

[Hebe · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was so bored, I'm sorry.

[Hannah · Rating 2 out of 5]

nothing really happens in this tbh

[Kay · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF @ Page 90

Perfectly captures how interminably long and dreary one single school day could feel

[Jennie Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5⭐️

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. Moving, funny, sad as hell.

[Austin Gooder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just so beautiful and special. It felt like a warm hug and a cold, threadbare rug. So good that I was convinced that the author was Irish.

[Joel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Startling in its short descriptive sentences. Abrasive and pointed. The characters will stay with me. Stylish and visual. 80s school setting very nostalgia inducing. Begs to be reread.

[BoBster.1971 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took me ages to read and I’m not entirely sure what happened. I enjoyed it nonetheless….

[Eddie Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

4/5
Very good. A tale of friendship, loneliness and grief. Lots of interiority with multiple POVs – but each voice is distinct, from super intelligent James through to bit-of-a-lad Kelly. Told in third-person present tense.
It's set across just one day in a grammar school in the early 1980s after the death of a beloved teacher in the early hours of the morning. Reminded me a little of Dylan Thomas's 'Under Milkwood' with the same level of description and everydayness.
Probably too long in places and could have been trimmed by 1/4 and so many characters that I had to keep a list of children and teachers.
One of those books that you probably need to read twice to fully absorb.
I've picked out some favourite passages:
How our bodies can fail us: "The intricate tucks and pleats of the soft organs, their secret betrayals packed in closely together." p92
The ripe intimacy of Tin and Davy's lunchtime walk through the dell. p185
The spilling of cutlery in the school canteen: "...quantities of silverware had shot across the floor like fish poured from a net..." p195
The pain of broken friendships p119.
MC Tin in detention, head down on desk: "...she can hear the rumble from the floor below. Chairs moving, the bass of the geography teacher's voice. And through the windows, the air bringing the church bells from Castle Hill..." p270
And more noises: "... the jingle of a fax machine. it stops to think, and then continues its scramble of information..."
Super description of empty school p329
And the final chapter where all non essential words are stripped away and it is reduced to a 'poem' is powerful.

[Karo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Solid read, took me some time to get into it and at the beginning the writing style was really hard for me to read, had to put it down for a while, but when I picked it back up, I found the flow and actually liked it. It is still a hard to read book and I'm sure I missed a bunch of subtleties that I really can't be bothered to analyse any closer.
I don't think the book necessarily wanted to tell or teach me anything specific. It was just about people, which are always my favourite books (and I'm sure this one would've joined the list if it wasn't for the writing style, it was really a struggle sometimes, read kind of like a dream, something you can't quite see clearly, a group of people hidden behind smoke or fog, or something you look back on, a half-faded memory).
It was still nice. Might like it more on a second read-through, but who knows if that will ever happen.

[Kathryn Franks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Writing style is lyrical, poetic, evocative, lush, but quite difficult to parse at times. The multiple POV structure gives the breadth that makes the novel thematically interesting, but ultimately might have been too large for a solid execution. It did drag a bit, but I am so glad I made it to the last 20%— great writing.

[Sara Hughes · Rating 2 out of 5]

i didn’t really like this, found it tedious with too many tropes. every once in a while there was a sentiment that was true or relatable or powerful, but not enough to save the book. i liked the very end when we heard from the teacher but even then it seemed like it was trying to hard, especially the last few lines.

[Cloé Gratton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve almost never read such a subtle story. Everything is mood, subtext, atmosphere yet it is a page turner. It remains a mystery why exactly did I enjoy it so much. It is haunting. You follow different characters who revolve around a tragic death for one single day. The day just before they start coping with the rest of their lives.

[Stacey]

DNF at page 66, there are so many characters introduced who don’t have any distinguishing features (with Tin being only a slight exception), after the death of the teacher is announced I kept waiting for something to happen to get me to care about the story of even a single character. It was turning into a hate read with me finishing each chapter asking “what is the point”?

[Gavin Attridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well she understands how teenagers think, but nothing happens. I kept waiting and reading on, but nothing ever develops beyond the minutiae of a day in the life of high school students and there is no closure on any of the threads. The promising start with the death of one of the teachers just fades away and left me feeling unsatisfied, frustrated even. Is there another volume coming?

[Colline Vinay Kook-Chun · Rating 3 out of 5]

What I loved most about this book was the memories that it provoked. The book is set in the UK in the 1980s and many of the references made me think of my own childhood.
The writing is slow-paced as the author describes the grief experienced by teachers and students on the suicide of the vice principal. The story is written with empathy as the reader sees a snapshot of the characters’ lives.

[Catherine Gilman · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strange to read a book and be unsure at the end of it. I was compelled to keep reading, beautiful writing but not sure if this was just the indulgence of the writer, 428 pages is longer than it needed to be perhaps and I feel like I'm missing the point somehow.

[Linden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in a single day, students and teachers at an elite school deal with a tragic death. It really captures the personalities and idiosyncrasies of everyone affected. And the descriptions are very poetic. 4.5 stars.

[Anni · Rating 3 out of 5]

📚I had such high expectations. I was instantly drawn to this book (It’s gorgeous) and I loved the premise. I thought it was very daring.

♠️At first I thought this book had a very 🍒’Skins’ if they did Skins in the 1980’s🍒feel. It really did have the potential to be one of those books that reminds you what it’s like to be 17 again.

🕚I liked getting to know each individual character but when the book is set over the course of just one day, all the information we learn about them is kind of inconsequential. It’s also difficult to attach yourself to a particular character. Though individual narratives sometimes intertwined, it was all very chop and change. Somehow it felt as though it was all too much but still left a lot of questions unanswered.

📇The writer's voice is very sophisticated to the extent that it’s sometimes distracting and can be nonsensical.
Largely uneventful (though in truth I'm not sure what I was expecting of a story told over the course of a day)

[Georgie · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

[Evelyne Goulet · Rating 3 out of 5]

kinda hated the first 90% of the book and had to force myself to keep going and then the last 30 pages were some of the best I’ve read this year?