Reading in the Dark

by Seamus Deane

A New York Times Notable Book
Winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize
Winner of the Irish Times Fiction Award and International Award

Hugely acclaimed in Great Britain, where it was awarded the Guardian Fiction Prize and short-listed for the Booker, Seamus Deane's first novel is a mesmerizing story of childhood set against the violence of Northern Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s.

The boy narrator grows up haunted by a truth he both wants and does not want to discover. The matter: a deadly betrayal, unspoken and unspeakable, born of political enmity. As the boy listens through the silence that surrounds him, the truth spreads like a stain until it engulfs him and his family. And as he listens, and watches, the world of legend--the stone fort of Grianan, home of the warrior Fianna; the Field of the Disappeared, over which no gulls fly--reveals its transfixing reality. Meanwhile the real world of adulthood unfolds its secrets like a collection of folktales: the dead sister walking again; the lost uncle, Eddie, present on every page; the family house "as cunning and articulate as a labyrinth, closely designed, with someone sobbing at the heart of it."

Seamus Deane has created a luminous tale about how childhood fear turns into fantasy and fantasy turns into fact. Breathtakingly sad but vibrant and unforgettable, Reading in the Dark is one of the finest books about growing up--in Ireland or anywhere--that has ever been written.

Genres: Fiction, Ireland, Historical Fiction, Irish Literature, Literary Fiction, Historical, Novels

246 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Seamus Deane was a Northern Irish poet, novelist, critic, and influential intellectual historian whose work left a lasting mark on Irish literature. He earned international recognition with his debut novel Reading in the Dark, a multilayered story that won several major awards and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Although he began as a poet, Deane built a distinguished academic career, teaching in Ireland, the United States, and at the University of Notre Dame, where he became a leading voice in Irish Studies. A founding director of the Field Day Theatre Company, he also shaped critical discourse as editor of the Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing and other landmark projects.

Reviews

[Adina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading in The Dark is a novel about the growing divisions in Northern Ireland. It follows a young boy growing in family who keep a terrible secret connected with these issues. The books consist of episodes from the boy’s childhood and a bit later. Some are just snippets of life, games, poverty, family. Others are connected more to this big secret and the struggle of the boy to find out more about it.

The novel covers a significant range of time and the fragmented structure did not allow me to feel anything for the main character or to get involved in the narrative. Reading in The Dark is beautifully written, a poem in prose, but I could only admire the it from afar.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

(4.5) These vivid vignettes of childhood and young adulthood are so convincing that I could have been fooled into believing I was reading a memoir. Indeed, this debut novel has generally been interpreted as heavily autobiographical, with the anonymous narrator, the third of seven children born to Catholic parents in Derry, Northern Ireland, taken to be a stand-in for Deane.

Ireland’s internecine violence is the sinister backdrop to this family’s everyday sorrows, including the death of a child and the mother’s shaky mental health. The narrator also learns a family secret from his dying maternal grandfather that at first thrills him – he knows something his father doesn’t! – but later serves to drive him away from his parents. The short chapters take place between 1945 and 1971: starting when the boy is five years old and encountering a household ghost on the stairs and ending as, in his early thirties, he lays his father to rest in the midst of the Troubles.

The Irish have such a knack for holding humor and tragedy up side by side – think John Boyne, James Joyce and Frank McCourt. The one force doesn’t negate the other, but the juxtaposition reminds you that life isn’t all gloom or laughs. There are some terrifically funny incidents in Reading in the Dark, like the individual sex ed. chat with Father Nugent (“And semen is the Latin for seed. Do you have to know Latin to do this?”) and going to investigate the rumor of a brothel by the football ground. But there is also perhaps the best ghost story I’ve ever read, an eerie tale of shape-shifting children he hears from his aunt.

This book captures all the magic, uncertainty and heartache of being a child, in crisp scenes I saw playing out in my mind. If I have one small, strange complaint, it’s that there’s too much plot – most of the chapters function perfectly well as stand-alone short stories, so, particularly in the last third, the growing obsession with the family secret feels like an unnecessary attempt to tie everything together. That plus the slight irrelevance of the title are the only reasons this misses out on 5 stars from me.

This is probably one of my favorite Irish reads. It’s no wonder Deane won so many prizes for this: the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, the Guardian Fiction Prize, and the Irish Literature Prize; he was also shortlisted for the 1996 Booker Prize.

Favorite lines:

“Child, she’d tell me, I think sometimes you’re possessed. Can’t you just let the past be the past?”

“He looked up at me, smiling, to say: ah well, it was all blood under the bridge now”

“Politics destroyed people’s lives in this place, he said. People were better not knowing some things”

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Paul Bryant · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, the blurbs on the back say: "Marvellous...almost impossible to put down" (Independent on Sunday) and "A profoundly emotive and seamlessly structured exploration of loss and regret. It is also funny and authentic. What more could one ask of a book?" My boorish response, however, is

BAH!

So it's all about this boy growing up in Northern Ireland with his mother going round the twist and some great big family secret hanging over them like a dentist's drill, all about the grandfather and the uncle and the dad and the IRA and someone was an informant and betrayed the holy IRA and got shot but everyone was told he'd went to Chicago and all this going on and on while the rather bewildered young lad, the I of the book, tries to grow up past the age of ten without himself being taken for an informant and beaten to a pulp, but instead learning the facts of life and going to the pictures with Irene Mackey. Which by page 150 I couldn't give the right cheek of my own grandad's arse about.
I mean, I read Angela's Ashes, and that was something to moan about, fair play and all. But this? Give him a clip round the ear and a bag of marbles. Jaysus, what a mitherer.

[Jeanette (Ms. Feisty) · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book begins with an epigraph from "She Moved Through the Fair":

The people were saying no two were e'er wed
But one had a sorrow that never was said.

Those two lines carry the essence of the story. The long-term consequences of keeping secrets are at the heart of Reading in the Dark.

The unnamed narrator describes his Catholic boyhood in Derry in the 40s and 50s. Both his parents' families have secrets held since the time of the Troubles in the 1920s.
As the protagonist moves from boyhood into adolescence, he becomes almost obsessed with the family legends and bits of conversations he has heard through the years. Who really killed Billy Mahon? Who was the informer? Is Uncle Eddie dead or alive? And why did McIlhenny run off to America? Eventually the boy pieces together the truth, but it comes at some cost to himself and his family. Too late he discovers that even those we love cannot bear our presence once we have uncovered what lies behind their deepest shame.

Woven into the early narrative are some juicy Irish myths, ghost stories, and superstitions. I would have welcomed more of these as the story progressed, but Deane abandoned them in favor of a more serious tone. This was my only disappointment, as I'd come to look forward to the next interjection of folklore.

All in all a fine work for a poet's first novel. Like his narrator, Seamus Deane grew up in Derry in the 40s and 50s, so this could almost work as a fictional memoir.

[Bob Newman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A lot of skeletons in this closet

In flowing prose of beautiful English, Seamus Deane creates a saga of growing up in Northern Ireland between 1945 and the early sixties, with a few last chapters up to 1971. It concerns a Catholic lad in the town of Derry (Londonderry) just by the border with the Republic of Ireland, near an ancient fort known as Grianan. In a series of short chapters we trace the boy’s life and his family history in those times. As you read, the skeletons in the family closet begin to appear, slowly revealing the passions and treacheries of the times before the boy’s birth, in the 1920s and 30s, the Time of Troubles in Ireland. The boy himself unravels certain mysteries, some killings and betrayals, injustices, and cover-ups. Whatever happened to Uncle Eddy? And that’s all in the family. In the end, he knows more about all this than almost anyone else, especially as the older generation die off. The novel is like a winding river through the recent history of Ulster, leaving islands midstream unexplored, jumping over falls that drop into pools unsaid, leading you nevertheless to a realization of what had gone on in that unhappy land and a family history full of secret betrayals. [*Please show me a happy land. What a cursed race we are! Perhaps we all inhabit that Field of the Disappeared over which no birds ever fly, mentioned in an Irish legend herein. You never get out alive.]

One of the best novels I’ve read in quite a while. I can’t discuss it in more than general terms without revealing at least some of the many secrets that suddenly shine like a lantern on a foggy night as the boy’s life unfolds. Since there are over 300 reviews already here, I’m sure you can glean more information by reading some of them.

[Patrick O'Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you’re Irish, then you’ve probably got a crazy uncle who occasionally comes home from the pub singing “The Boys of 98” at the top of his lungs at three in the morning or your grandmother, after she slipped a little whiskey in your milk to help you sleep, tells you tales of Old Eire that make the Grimm Brother’s Fairy Tales look like gobshite. If you’re not, well, then you have to read Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark to truly get a glimpse of the Irish experience – notably the Northern Irish experience of growing up in the Fifties in Derry.

[Lada Moskalets · Rating 4 out of 5]

Така книжка могла б бути написана українським автором, бо в Ірландії та України є весь цей схожий сумний багаж історії, колоніального спадку та мовчання, як способу терапії, що ніколи не працює. Головний герой - хлопчик з маленького ірландського містечка дорослішає і по крихті збирає інформацію про свою родину, при цьому батьки і ближчі родичі мовчать, тому довідуватися про різні дивні і темні події доводиться в кого випаде.
Попри таку багатообіцяючу ідею книжка досить повільна і місцями нуднувата, це не детектив, у якому істина і похмура правда раптом розкриваються перед читачем. Більшість речей так і не розкриються.
Мені найбільше сподобалися маленькі історії, вкраплені то тут, то там. Наприклад про покійну сестричку героя, яку він після її смерті зустрічає на цвинтарі. Чи історія про няньку і дітей-привидів. Або конфлікт з батьком, в процесі якого герой викорчовує улюблені троянди, найгарніше що є біля будинку. Навала щурів у містечку і як від них позбуваються. Кожна з цих історій яскрава як уривок з фільму і запам'ятовується краще, аніж решта сюжету.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite books; I've probably given away 15 copies of this book. Much like Graham Swift's Waterland, this is an impeccably written, elegantly crafted novel. Much prefer this treatment of Irish family life to Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes.

[Cari · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of vignettes that gradually coalesce to form a complete narrative revolving around family, death, loyalty, and love. Short, sweet, and stunning, with beautiful, simple writing.

[langana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Truputį užtruko kol įsiskaičiau. Pati istorija tikrai įdomi, nors, kiek įsivaizduoju, nėra unikali. Pasakojimo stilius truputį erzino visą laiką, nors suprantu, kad autorius pasirinko tokį sprendimą, kad įtikinamiau atrodytų pasakojimas iš vaiko pozicijos. Pradžioje jis dar visai mažas, tai ir jo pamąstymai, prisiminimai tokie trūkčiojantys, besiblaškantys. Vėliau pasakojimas darosi rišlesnis, nors iki pat pabaigos kupinas užuominų, grįžimų, nukrypimų.
Buvo įdomu ir kartais juokinga skaityti apie berniukų mokyklą, ypač apie "lytinį auklėjimą". Kunigas, pasikvietęs asmeniniam pokalbiui, pasakoja apie lytinius santykius vartodamas lotyniškus žodžius, o berniukas galvoja: kaži kaip mano tėvams pavyksta, kai jie lotynų kalbos nemoka :D

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deane presents Reading in the Dark as a “novel” and I am unclear as to how much is fact and how much is fiction. Much of what he wrote about the dynamic of the Irish family situation rings very true in my own reality. Irish families are a topic close to my heart. His discussion of the things left unsaid in Irish family life rings true and is echoed in many other books about Irish and Irish-American culture, ranging from Alice Carey’s I’ll Know it When I See it, to Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, to Tom Hayden’s Irish on the Inside. Much of what he writes about the continuing violence, prejudice and trouble in Northern Ireland is factual—even if his characters are fictitious. And I don’t know that they are.
Deane presents a compelling look at life in embattled Northern Ireland. He presents to the reader an intimate portrait of an Irish-Catholic family. He offers the superstitions surrounding this family. He allows the reader to accept that a ghost can be a spirit or a memory—that both are haunting and can be frightening enough to devastate lives.
The story is presented in a first person child’s view, albeit it an omniscient view. Dean walks us through the confusion of growing up an outcast in his community—which is itself outcast from the society in which it is enmeshed. We, as readers, are presented with several different perspectives of the outsider. Deane’s mother keeps herself just beyond the intimacy of her family, specifically her husband and sister, by keeping her secrets. Secrets that eventually drive her insane. Her husband, Dean’s father, remains outside because of what he does not know, as well as what he does. Each of the children in this family is left on the outside because none of them knows the whole truth.
For Irish-Americans (like Dean) reaching back to untangle the things unsaid can be a healing process. To write about it offers others a door into the silences in their own families. I have read many books about Irish and Irish-American families and the recurring theme of prevailing silence—and how families function, or don’t, around that. Dean’s direct insertion of the larger socio-political picture into the dynamic speaks more directly to the issue and perhaps can offer, at least for Deane, a way to find definition to who he is—and why.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is another book I read for my Northern Ireland class at Notre Dame, which is where Seamus Deane teaches part of the time. He came to visit my class after we'd finished reading it, and I think the entire class mostly gazed at him in awe while he sat with us to discuss it. It is a haunting book, a beautiful book, and ultimately a very tragic book. About the power of secrets, the value of keeping them and not keeping them. It's a very complicated book as well. I remember the class having a whole period where we just sort of hashed out the details amongst ourselves, how we had interpreted what actually happened. This novel is a fantastic first hand account of the troubles plaguing Ireland at this time.

[Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading In The Dark is a first person account of an extraordinary childhood. On the surface, the family seems to be stable enough. They are Catholics and the novel’s narrator is about half way along his parents´ progeny. Nothing special there...

They are not rich, and apparently not poor. They get by. The lad explores the neighbourhood, makes friends, starts school. Eventually he proves to be quite academic and he clearly goes from personal success to further personal success.

But all the time there’s something in the past that labels him. There are people who call him strange names, accuse him of things he hasn’t done. He does not understand, but feels the consequences. Life can be complicated when you’re born to a Catholic family in Northern Ireland.

The boy grows up in the 1950s and 1960s. Via short, dated chapters, arranged chronologically and starting in February 1945, we able to build and perhaps experience the lad’s world. We share the boy’s new experience, feel the changes in his life and body as he does. But there is always something unsaid, intangible, but undoubtedly real and of consequence. Everyone seems to know something, but he has little idea what it all means.

Mother and father remain reticent. Relatives and acquaintances allude to Eddie, the boy’s uncle, who is not around any more. Clearly Eddie died in strange circumstances. But in the Northern Ireland of the 1950s, you have to be careful what you say, when you speak and whom you mix with. Just being seen talking to Sergeant Burke, the policeman, can result in your being labelled a traitor, a collaborator, or worse.

The boy’s relationship with the Church and its clergy is both fascinating and surreal. There are moments of humour, times of fear, often juxtaposed. There’s a maths teacher whose class rules are so complex that any response seems punishable. Serves them right… It seems that whatever contribution an individual might make has the potential to render that person in need of strokes, but the ground rules demand that no-one may opt out.

It’s the same in the wider society. When you’re a Catholic in Northern Ireland – and perhaps if you are not! – there are no fences you can sit on. Whatever you do it will be wrong. There are enemies on both sides of every fence, so wherever you climb down, beware. Tread carefully, know your place, stay on your guard. But what if, like our young lad, you don’t know what to beware of?

Slowly, however, the real truth behind Uncle Eddie’s fate emerges. It’s only then that the growing boy, and indeed the reader, realises just how complicated – and vindictive – life can be.

Reading In The Dark is a highly poetic novel. The scenes are vivid, beautifully portrayed. They are short, but each adds its own new detail to the bigger story of how a family has learned to cope with its own chequered past. Those who don’t know the mistakes of history are perhaps doomed to repeat them. Those misled by untruth are not necessarily liars when they restate it. But complicating the past probably confuses the present and disturbs the future. Seamus Deane’s novel, Reading In The Dark, is a vivid and moving portrait of a family troubled by a past it dare not admit.

[Colleen Browne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Secrets and lies can wreak havoc on a family but when the family lives in the city of Derry in the North of Ireland during the troubles, the secrets can be more dangerous especially when the secret is connected to the troubles. Seamus Deane has written a beautiful, dramatic, and touching novel about a family whose secrets are just too hard to bear. I highly recommend this book. It is the kind of book that makes reading addictive.

[Janet · Rating 2 out of 5]

Couldn't finish this one...which is very rare for me. The quality of the writing was good, however there was no connection between each chapter leaving me disconnected from the book. There were no consistent characters to bond with and no story to lose oneself in. And, having just visited Ireland, I was looking forward to this read.

[Rima · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading in the Dark by Seamus Deane was a beautiful story that showed how family secrets were tainted by the political conflict in Northern Ireland during the 'Troubles'.
~
As my second experience of Irish literature, I learnt how mythical folktales about green eyed children taken by fairies and communal anger about victims of police oppression in Derry really shaped the protagonist's identity.

[Kuszma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hogy látja egy kissrác Derryből* az íreket? Nos, felületesen nézve éppen úgy, mint a legtöbb külföldi: babonák és kísértethistóriák. Katolicizmus és függetlenségi harc. Whiskey és viszály. Deane a líra mentén tolja ki a regény határait, rövid fejezetekből felépülő prózája olvasható lenne akár versfüzérként is, ha a nyomdászok kreatívabban tördelték volna a szöveget. És mégis képes arra, hogy ezeket a villanásokat valami koherens egésszé rendezze, valamivé, ami egyszerre érzékeny és sokat sejtető (de keveset magyarázó) látlelet egy család személyes tragédiájáról, ugyanakkor az egész észak-ír tragédiáról is. Rekonstrukció ez, az emlékek helyreállítása. Mert az emlékek hajlamosak arra, hogy az idő teltével alakot váltsanak, tényszerűségüket alárendeljék az emlékező azon vágyának, hogy úgy nézzenek ki, ahogy ki kellett volna nézniük: szégyenletes vagy szimplán érdektelen eseményből dicső emlékekké magasztosuljanak. Deane mintha ezt a folyamatot fordítaná vissza, hogy a mítosz mögött fellelje az igazságot – ami ugyan csak egyetlen személyes igazság az igazságok milliói között, de talán éppen ebből nyeri erejét.

* A szövegben Derryként szerepel, de a hátsó borítón Londonderry olvasható, amit, nagyon remélem, nem látnak meg az ír pajtások, mert nagyon mérgesek lennének miatta.

[Michael Johnston · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not sure I could say anything about this book other than that it is, in a word, brilliant. Written about a place Deane knew quite well, the book has that rare gift of making the reader feel intimately familiar with a place and a people he has never seen. Questions of truth, family history and the often-messy result of keeping it hidden, as well as vendetta and guilt by association, riddle the book. There are questions as to how much of the book is fiction and how much is fictionalized fact; I don't know that we'll ever know the true answer to that--and, really, it doesn't matter. Even if none of it really happened, events just like those in the book happened to many, many Irishmen and their families.

I don't want to give anything away, so I'm keeping plot details out of this, but I will say that it touches upon the Troubles of the early 20th century, and the harm done in those times to families on both sides, harm which often lingers for decades after the fact.

Be warned: It's sad, almost beyond the telling. The shadows of events that concern every character (which all happened long before the book opens) are felt for years, and the shadow falls across the entire life of the main character. This is not a happy book, despite the possibly-upbeat ending.

[Pamela · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing was beautiful, the pace slow, and at times, puzzled me as I tried to figure out where the book was going. But it slowly came together to tell the story of betrayal and guilt and the ripple affects that are felt beyond the first generation. I can't say enough about the writing, which evokes the times, the place, the poetry of the Irish. I actually wished for more drama because the story and the betrayal are really quite dramatic.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read this book three times now. I'm not certain I'll ever perfectly understand it. What I know is that the author has me in his hold; I will follow him wherever this story goes.

[Iryna K · Rating 5 out of 5]

Дуже сподобалася ця книжка. Історія про хлопчика у Деррі (Північна Ірландія) між 1947 і 1957 роками, про його світ: йродину з похмурими таємницями, школу, друзів, міських божевільних, привидів, поліцію, католицьких отців. Протягом книги герой дізнається ці самі родинні таємниці (які я водночас таємницями політичними, і які роблять його родину одним з прикладів життя під час змагань з�� незалежність, діяльності підпільної армії і оцього всього), і ми бачимо його відчуття і думки про те, що правда і таємниця роблять з людьми та родинами, хто має право на перше і на друге, і як загалом живеться з тягарем колоніалізму та антиколоніальної боротьби.
Але ця книга не лише про політику - там прекрасні сцени про навчання у католицькій школі, про читання, історії про привидів і одержимість. Загалом тут така майстерно створена атмосфера - з одного боку, це дитинство, як у будь-якої людини, і в ньому є легкість і очікування майбутнього, з іншого - багато темряви, що важким тягарем лежить на людях, багато страшного, незрозумілого і загрозливого. При цьому від прочитання не лишається отруйного післясмаку безнадії і відчаю, я не можу сказати, що ця книга важка. Похмура - так, але вона дуже швидко і на диво легко читається.
Одним словом, це була прямо моя чашка чаю, і мабуть, я буду її пречитувати.

[Leif Quinlan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've had Reading in the Dark for years and could never seem to pull the trigger and start it. When searching out novels of childhood or The Troubles or families, other books seemed to always float above it in my stack (its relative anonymity didn't help its cause - it seems relegated to deep listicle obscurity). Which is funny because it is a terrific novel. Structurally, it was very typical of most Irish novels - slightly experimental, impressively written, atmospheric and moody without overdoing it, and three-dimensional, lived-in characters that were perfectly typical while also being as individual as real human beings (you know, like the opposite of Stephen King's characters - no shade, I love King but unique, realistic characters isn't his strong suit). The mother is the heartbeat. She is wonderfully drawn and her personality and her choices and the grief and guilt that they cause are the sun and later, black hole that the rest of the story orbits.
It was too short to really fall in love but the 500 page version of Reading in the Dark is one of my favorite books
*The "Maths Class" chapter was positively sublime

[Trepanatsya · Rating 5 out of 5]

4,5

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel written by the late Seamus Deane, poet and literary critic, is very autobiographical. It is set in the Northern Irish city of Derry/Londonderry and begins in 1945 and continues through 1974. As the protagonist is Catholic, it is called Derry. This is the story of a family with members in Derry, as well as on the other side of the border in Donegal, and a secret at the heart of this extended family. It is a secret that festers for years, and although some family members know some of the secret, the whole story is known by very few.

The prose in the beginning chapters of the book that progress through the boy's childhood is gorgeous, and very poetic. As the boy loses his childhood innocence, the story becomes more focused on the family's poverty and the IRA campaign along the border with Donegal. The story moves into the era of the Civil Rights Movement in Northern Ireland, the arrival of British troops, and the Troubles. It is a classic of Northern Irish writing.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Put aside at pg 172 but not quite ready to abandon and have no idea when or if I'll return to it. Lovely writing but old-old, hate to say but almost stale Irish story of IRA "ghosts." Deane's language makes it fairly fresh, but not enough to keep me going. Problem is I've read so much Irish lit, past and present, on the same subject, and it becomes like reading yet another work on evil legacy of American slavery: there's Morrison's Beloved and there's everything else. And Deane, though talented, is no Morrison. Maybe not quite "everything else," but just too familiar to keep me engaged right now.

[natalie zander · Rating 5 out of 5]

there is truly nothing like actually enjoying what you’re reading for school :)

[Girish · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the best books about how growing up feels like - a series of images, knowledge gained through episodes, experiences frozen as memories, truths that increase or diminish love and lots and lots of stories..

At the crux of it is a family secret and the nameless child narrator's growing up is characterized by this secret with people around him talking things he doesn't understand at first. You the reader are expected to do the same and therein lies the fun - you are never right or wrong at your guess since none of the facts are explicitly stated!

Very early in the book, in the chapter named after the title, the narrator explains the sensation of holding a book with it's characters after the lights are switched off. He explains how the characters enact the scenes read so far and you start filling in the rest of the story and gaps from imagination.

Some of the chapters stand out. Like Katie's story of the Francis twins or the episode with Crazy Joe - which have a haunting feel. On the lighter side, the theology lecture or the chapter with the Bishop were ingenuous. Later on, the narrator wonders if memories aren't as powerful as ghosts in their haunting capacity. The relationship between the mother, father, brother and the narrator is warm and mesmerizing. You want them to be happy.

This is my third Irish family book and this too seemed to have a family secret and had politics and violence in the backdrop. One of my Irish colleagues once told me, "You don't want to be around at a family gathering since you don't know what secrets are going to come out from the uncles!" Maybe, we are the same.

One recommended read..

[Oscar Despard · Rating 3 out of 5]

This coming of age story, set in Northern Ireland, narrates the tragic tale of a family torn apart by secrets from the past. The novel skillfully displays the bitterly divided society of Derry, and the destructive effects of this division on the family involved. It accompanies this with several highly enjoyable passages: a Byzantine maths lesson endured by the protagonist was extremely funny. However, as a whole, this book did not interest or excite me in between these enjoyable moments; the language used was often excessively ornate, and thus prevented me from developing any real empathy with the book's characters. Ultimately, although intriguing, 'Reading in the Dark' was simply not sufficiently entertaining to read to merit any higher than a three-star rating from me.

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book read exactly like a memoir. Although it was quite serious in subject matter (Irish independence), there were a couple of really humorous chapters describing the narrator's experiences in the classroom. The family dynamics pulled at my heartstrings, especially since the author had the uncanny ability to let the reader easily figure out plot twists on one's own with subtle hints.

[Caoileann · Rating 5 out of 5]

tis is very special. Making me feel all colloquial-like, man dear, boys'o, it's a queer bit o writtin...

This is marvellous. Moving, sensitive but not at all slushy or saccharin. It is tender, haunting, and left me feeling quite emotionally fragile after finish it. Ah, Seamus Deane