Darkling

by Laura Beatty

Mia Morgan, in the middle of her life, is a woman under by memories of her late lover, by the relationship with her blind father, and by a family secret she can t forget. She is also accused of living in the her days are spent amid the life and letters of Lady Brilliana Harley, who lived nearly four hundred years ago during the English Civil War.

Brilliana Harley is a Puritan, a lone Roundhead in a county of Royalists, and it is not long before her enemies sit down in siege around her. As cannon-shot rains down upon her castle, she alone must captain a garrison of men and defend her home.

Out of Brilliana s words emerges a woman of courage and conviction, a loving mother and capable wife, dutiful even under duress. As Mia pieces her together, she finds that it is through Brilliana s life, so different and yet so similar, that she can come to understand her own.

Darkling is a revolutionary an echoing of two lives across the centuries, deftly weaving original seventeenth-century documents into the fabric of a modern fiction. The result is a book of voices, past and present, exquisitely observed and skilfully summoned.

Genres: Novels, British Literature, 21st Century, Fiction

400 pages, Paperback

First published May 22, 2014

About the author

Laura Beatty is the author of Pollard, a novel that won the Authors' Club First Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize. She has also written two biographies, the first about Lillie Langtry which contained the first publication of correspondence between Lillie and her lover Arthur Jones, and the second about Anne Boleyn.

(Source: https://atlantic-books.co.uk/contribu...)

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

I persevered with this book and overall was pleased I did. I thought it was a little slow and the end was very imbalanced between the two stories. I would have preferred Brilliana’s letters in modern English (perhaps in italics to highlight more obviously). I did however find the insight the letters provided into the working and hesitancy of each side during the civil war very enlightening and they brought out the agony created by the whole event. Mia’s story was intriguing and I specifically liked the development of Mia’s relationship with her father and thought it deserved another ‘episode’ at the end. Overall it was thought provoking and rewarding.

[Liz]

Another book without speech marks, so abandoning.
I might’ve have continued if the prose had grabbed me but it feels like an experimental writing style and I like conventional.

[Kirsty · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did keep leaving this book and coming back to it and, like others have said, found Mia tricky to warm to. Also some of Brilliana's letters were quite tricky to understand but it did build up into the moving ending of the siege at the castle- although I felt we then slightly abandoned Mia!

[Jaffareadstoo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This dual time narrative shares the story of two very different women. In the present day, Mia Morgan is tormented by grief and unhappy memories, of her late lover, her blind father and of a family secret which is best forgotten. Four hundred years in the past, Lady Brilliana Harley, is caught up in the conflict of the English Civil War and as her husband gets dragged into the conflict, Brilliana learns to defend her family with a strength she didn’t knew she possessed.

On the surface, these two women have little in common but gradually the pieces start to reveal common similarities and using the research left by her biographer lover, Mia starts to pick up Brilliana’s story of a strong God fearing, Puritan woman, who was living in a county of Royalists. Based on factual evidence, Brilliana, a prodigious letter writer really comes to life, and the skilful interweaving of both fact and fiction is cleverly achieved.

The story is rather slow in places and it took me a little way into the book before I began to warm to Mia’s style of observation but what is undeniable is the beauty and prose of Laura Beatty’s writing. There are some lovely descriptive passages and I found the opening chapter about the eye of the hawk quite enchanting. She describes the natural surroundings very well, so much so that Hereford, the area of Welsh Marches around Brilliana’s castle of Brampton Bryan, starts to come to life.

I think perhaps the most fascinating concept I will take away from this story is the strength of Brilliana Harley's character and what a lasting legacy she left behind with all her letters and observations of a very troubled time in England’s history.


My thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK, Vintage Publishing for my copy of this book.

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

A curate's egg. I really wanted to like this book but neither the historical thread nor the contemporary story which runs alongside it had enough oomph.

[Katherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just couldn't get into this book. Disappointing.