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Darkness and Day
When Sir Ransom Chace is reunited with his god-daughter Bridget, and her husband Edmund Gaunt, long dead secrets start to creep out of the wood-work.
Chace and Gaunt both have two daughters borne out of happy marriages, but both have also fathered another daughter out of wedlock.
As aging Chace debates age, life, and morality with his best friend and two daughters, he realises he wants to clear his conscience before he dies.
Meanwhile the two young Gaunt daughters overhear a shocking secret about their parents relationship…
What happens when a dignified man comes to believe that his wife is also his daughter…?
Conveyed almost entirely in dialogue, Compton-Burnett’s novel was ground-breaking for its time, experimenting with style and content.
Chace and Gaunt both have two daughters borne out of happy marriages, but both have also fathered another daughter out of wedlock.
As aging Chace debates age, life, and morality with his best friend and two daughters, he realises he wants to clear his conscience before he dies.
Meanwhile the two young Gaunt daughters overhear a shocking secret about their parents relationship…
What happens when a dignified man comes to believe that his wife is also his daughter…?
Conveyed almost entirely in dialogue, Compton-Burnett’s novel was ground-breaking for its time, experimenting with style and content.
248 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1951
19 people are currently reading
698 people want to read
About the author
Ivy Compton-Burnett
20 books132 followersDame Ivy Compton-Burnett, DBE was an English novelist, published (in the original hardback editions) as I. Compton-Burnett. Her works consist mainly of dialogue and focus on family life among the late Victorian or Edwardian upper middle class. She was awarded the 1955 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for her novel Mother and Son.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
November 16, 2022
This is what the wonderful John Waters has to say about ICB and about this book:
"Want to go further in your advanced search for snobbish, elitist, literary wit? Of course you do, but I should warn you, you'll have to work for it. Try reading any novel by Ivy Compton-Burnett. She was English, looked exactly like the illustration on the Old Maid card, never had sex even once, and wrote twenty dark, hilarious, evil little novels between the years 1911 and 1969. Pick any one of them. They're all pretty much the same. Little actual action, almost no description, and endless pages of hermetically sealed, stylized, sharp, cruel, venomous Edwardian dialogue. "Once you pick up a Compton-Burnett," Ivy commented about her own books, "it's hard not to put them down again."
Since Darkness and Day has been called "one of her strangest novels," I guess I'll recommend you start with this one. She wrote it in 1951, when she was sixty-seven years old. It is her insanely inventive revision of Oedipus Rex. A family returns from exile to reveal the deep secrets of their accidental incestuous marriage only to learn that their innocent truths cause even more complicated shame. Ivy Compton-Burnett was obsessed with the exact meaning of language, and she hated describing anything that wasn't included in what her characters actually said. She would paint a verbal picture of the people in her books but once and only once (usually when they are first introduced) and you'd better remember it, because often there are thirty pages of dialogue before someone else is identified again. When readers finally reach these tiny islands of rest between speeches, they steady their eyes, take a deep breath, and plunge back into Ivy's turbulent whirlpool of language. No wonder a critic called Miss Compton-Burnett "a writer's writer." Her dialogue constantly deconstructs what her characters actually mean to say. Once you get the rhythm, the sparkle, the subtle nuances of family dominance in her character's words, you will feel superior to other people and how they struggle to speak in real life.
Sure, you'll get lost reading Darkness and Day, maybe hypnotized, probably even bored. But as soon as you realize you aren't concentrating, not paying enough attention, BANG! A great line will hit you right between the eyes and give you the intellectual shivers. You certainly can't skim this book. One editor complained after reading long passages of dialogue, and having to turn back page after page to figure out who was saying what to whom, that the author had forgotten to write that one of the characters was speaking on the telephone. Ivy grumpily admitted he was correct and added two words to the text to explain: "He said."
The monstrously intelligent and all-knowing children in Darkness and Day speak like no other children in the history of youth. "Do you remember your Uncle?" a relative asks his nieces Rose and Viola. "You used to be younger," Rose says with steely reasoning. "That is true," the uncle answers, "and I feel as young as I did." "People do feel younger than they are," she quickly responds. "They don't get used to a new age, before they get to the next one. I feel I am nine, and I have been ten for a week. I am in my eleventh year." "I don't often think as much as that," her sister Viola comments. "I always think," answers Rose with a vengeance.
Simple truths are told in the book in bafflingly elegant ways. "You can't help what happens in your mind," one character comments. When the family worries about a scandal, a member logically surmises, "People don't forget things, unless they do." After the housekeeper catches little Rose reading in bed past her bedtime, she scolds, "Dear, dear! I did not see you hide that book." "Well if you had, it wouldn't have been hidden," Rose answers without flinching. Even something as simple as saying good morning can be tortuously debated. When the children don't answer, the teacher makes another attempt. "Well, I will try to do better. Good morning to you both again." "We don't say things like 'good morning,' " Rose answers, "we don't see what use it is." "Well, perhaps you are not old enough to realize that," the teacher tries to argue. "We don't want to be old," Rose answers back, "people don't really know much more. They only learn to seem to." When the children have so tortured their teacher that she quits after only two days' work, she tries to put her frustration into words. "The use of patience is not to encourage people without proper feeling to be intolerable," she says, but the children are unmoved. As their governess discovers a mean prank the children have pulled involving the teacher's chair, she tries to discipline them. "The thing that occurs to me, is too bad to be true." "Then it can't be true," Rose answers, ever the debater. "I don't dare ask about it," the governess proclaims. "Then there is the end of the matter," the children declare with intellectual victory.
And on death, Ms. Compton-Burnett's writing can be just plain brutal. After the children in Darkness and Day are told of a passing in the family, they are asked to "run upstairs and forget what is sad. Just remember the happy part of it." "What is the happy part?" wonders Viola. "There is none," answers Rose. "Why do people talk as if they are glad when someone is dead? I think it must mean there is a little gladness somewhere."
Right up to the end of her life, Ivy Compton-Burnett's irritable, nitpicking, obsessive love of words never ceased. According to the great biography Ivy, by Hilary Spurling, an old friend came to visit Ivy and she woke up from a catnap and snapped, "I'm not tired, I'm sleepy. They are different things. And I'm surprised that you should say tired when you mean sleepy." That Ivy! She was a real laff-riot. Her last spoken words before death? "Leave me alone." I have to. I have all twenty of her novels and I've read nineteen. If I read the one that is left there will be no more Ivy Compton-Burnett for me and I will probably have to die myself."
"Want to go further in your advanced search for snobbish, elitist, literary wit? Of course you do, but I should warn you, you'll have to work for it. Try reading any novel by Ivy Compton-Burnett. She was English, looked exactly like the illustration on the Old Maid card, never had sex even once, and wrote twenty dark, hilarious, evil little novels between the years 1911 and 1969. Pick any one of them. They're all pretty much the same. Little actual action, almost no description, and endless pages of hermetically sealed, stylized, sharp, cruel, venomous Edwardian dialogue. "Once you pick up a Compton-Burnett," Ivy commented about her own books, "it's hard not to put them down again."
Since Darkness and Day has been called "one of her strangest novels," I guess I'll recommend you start with this one. She wrote it in 1951, when she was sixty-seven years old. It is her insanely inventive revision of Oedipus Rex. A family returns from exile to reveal the deep secrets of their accidental incestuous marriage only to learn that their innocent truths cause even more complicated shame. Ivy Compton-Burnett was obsessed with the exact meaning of language, and she hated describing anything that wasn't included in what her characters actually said. She would paint a verbal picture of the people in her books but once and only once (usually when they are first introduced) and you'd better remember it, because often there are thirty pages of dialogue before someone else is identified again. When readers finally reach these tiny islands of rest between speeches, they steady their eyes, take a deep breath, and plunge back into Ivy's turbulent whirlpool of language. No wonder a critic called Miss Compton-Burnett "a writer's writer." Her dialogue constantly deconstructs what her characters actually mean to say. Once you get the rhythm, the sparkle, the subtle nuances of family dominance in her character's words, you will feel superior to other people and how they struggle to speak in real life.
Sure, you'll get lost reading Darkness and Day, maybe hypnotized, probably even bored. But as soon as you realize you aren't concentrating, not paying enough attention, BANG! A great line will hit you right between the eyes and give you the intellectual shivers. You certainly can't skim this book. One editor complained after reading long passages of dialogue, and having to turn back page after page to figure out who was saying what to whom, that the author had forgotten to write that one of the characters was speaking on the telephone. Ivy grumpily admitted he was correct and added two words to the text to explain: "He said."
The monstrously intelligent and all-knowing children in Darkness and Day speak like no other children in the history of youth. "Do you remember your Uncle?" a relative asks his nieces Rose and Viola. "You used to be younger," Rose says with steely reasoning. "That is true," the uncle answers, "and I feel as young as I did." "People do feel younger than they are," she quickly responds. "They don't get used to a new age, before they get to the next one. I feel I am nine, and I have been ten for a week. I am in my eleventh year." "I don't often think as much as that," her sister Viola comments. "I always think," answers Rose with a vengeance.
Simple truths are told in the book in bafflingly elegant ways. "You can't help what happens in your mind," one character comments. When the family worries about a scandal, a member logically surmises, "People don't forget things, unless they do." After the housekeeper catches little Rose reading in bed past her bedtime, she scolds, "Dear, dear! I did not see you hide that book." "Well if you had, it wouldn't have been hidden," Rose answers without flinching. Even something as simple as saying good morning can be tortuously debated. When the children don't answer, the teacher makes another attempt. "Well, I will try to do better. Good morning to you both again." "We don't say things like 'good morning,' " Rose answers, "we don't see what use it is." "Well, perhaps you are not old enough to realize that," the teacher tries to argue. "We don't want to be old," Rose answers back, "people don't really know much more. They only learn to seem to." When the children have so tortured their teacher that she quits after only two days' work, she tries to put her frustration into words. "The use of patience is not to encourage people without proper feeling to be intolerable," she says, but the children are unmoved. As their governess discovers a mean prank the children have pulled involving the teacher's chair, she tries to discipline them. "The thing that occurs to me, is too bad to be true." "Then it can't be true," Rose answers, ever the debater. "I don't dare ask about it," the governess proclaims. "Then there is the end of the matter," the children declare with intellectual victory.
And on death, Ms. Compton-Burnett's writing can be just plain brutal. After the children in Darkness and Day are told of a passing in the family, they are asked to "run upstairs and forget what is sad. Just remember the happy part of it." "What is the happy part?" wonders Viola. "There is none," answers Rose. "Why do people talk as if they are glad when someone is dead? I think it must mean there is a little gladness somewhere."
Right up to the end of her life, Ivy Compton-Burnett's irritable, nitpicking, obsessive love of words never ceased. According to the great biography Ivy, by Hilary Spurling, an old friend came to visit Ivy and she woke up from a catnap and snapped, "I'm not tired, I'm sleepy. They are different things. And I'm surprised that you should say tired when you mean sleepy." That Ivy! She was a real laff-riot. Her last spoken words before death? "Leave me alone." I have to. I have all twenty of her novels and I've read nineteen. If I read the one that is left there will be no more Ivy Compton-Burnett for me and I will probably have to die myself."
July 15, 2010
It was like reading the bible... while drunk.
August 23, 2015
This is a review of the 2015 digital publication of Darkness and Day, which was written in 1951 by Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett. It is a slow paced psychological look at the life and past of Sir Ransom Chase, his relationship with his wife, his daughters and some disturbing, incestuous family secrets. The grim Oedipus-like storyline was way ahead of it's time, quite out-there even now, let alone in the early 50s.
The entire book is written in dialogue. It's a strange format, and this novel was a contradictory read for me. At times, it was boring and confusing, as I slogged through page after page of dialogue and at times, wondered who was even talking right now. Others it was witty, gripping, dark, even shocking. The children's dialogue (in particular with their governess) especially had me smiling, possibly the best written children I have ever read. She had a way with language that was unique and that kept me turning the pages even through the momentary bore. Even without descriptive prose each character has depth, and the relationship with others fully formed.
This isn't an easy read and I can't describe it as a fun one either. It was an experience and I'm glad that I persisted and finished the book, I have a new found appreciation for Dame Ivy and her skill, but I'm not sure I will be brave enough to look at any of her other works. Once again, when I consider the author I am left with conflicting views - it seems a huge shame that someone with this level of writing skill is not more widely read in our current times, but on the other hand, both her style and subject matter are unlikely to appeal to today's readers.
Despite giving it 5 stars, I'm really not sure I would recommend it to any of my friends or family - but certainly to any avid readers who are interested in exploring something different, or existing fans of her writing.
I received a digital copy of this book through NetGalley.
The entire book is written in dialogue. It's a strange format, and this novel was a contradictory read for me. At times, it was boring and confusing, as I slogged through page after page of dialogue and at times, wondered who was even talking right now. Others it was witty, gripping, dark, even shocking. The children's dialogue (in particular with their governess) especially had me smiling, possibly the best written children I have ever read. She had a way with language that was unique and that kept me turning the pages even through the momentary bore. Even without descriptive prose each character has depth, and the relationship with others fully formed.
This isn't an easy read and I can't describe it as a fun one either. It was an experience and I'm glad that I persisted and finished the book, I have a new found appreciation for Dame Ivy and her skill, but I'm not sure I will be brave enough to look at any of her other works. Once again, when I consider the author I am left with conflicting views - it seems a huge shame that someone with this level of writing skill is not more widely read in our current times, but on the other hand, both her style and subject matter are unlikely to appeal to today's readers.
Despite giving it 5 stars, I'm really not sure I would recommend it to any of my friends or family - but certainly to any avid readers who are interested in exploring something different, or existing fans of her writing.
I received a digital copy of this book through NetGalley.
Want to Read
May 9, 2012I actually may have read this. Sigh. Getting older has it's pros and cons.
Read
February 23, 2024Out-of-wedlock children once again play a significant role, as does the eternal tension between 'upstairs' and 'downstairs.' Additions to this version include a reverse-Oedipal structure, a pair of sister children who are precocious, obnoxious, and adorable--in turns--and a smart-mouthed under-butler. Inheritance, too, of course, plays a role. This one is, perhaps, kinder than some of Compton-Burnett's earlier novels--some of its trauma being resolved in unspoken acts of decency.
August 19, 2012
Ivy Compton-Burnett came to my attention via a favorable review of a blogger (I forget which one). Alas, it could not have referred to Darkness and Day. It is written almost entirely in dialogue and you have to pay close attention to figure out what day it is, who is in the room, who is listening in the hall, what each oblique reference might mean...all in sharpish ironic tone in a feeble imitation of Oscar Wilde. It might have made a decent play, but as a novel it is pretty bad. I am surprised that it was ever reprinted.
January 7, 2022
Easily one of the most challenging books I've ever read. Ivy Compton-Burnett practically dares you to read her work. Almost like she doesn't even want you to read it. An amazing book if you're up to it.
March 27, 2023
A week into the new year and I already had one book under my belt. I was well on my way to my goal of reading two books a month. I decided I wanted to get as many books in as possible while I was feeling so motivated, and chose one of the shortest books on my shelf: Ivy Compton-Burnett's Darkness and Day.. Only a couple hundred pages long, I could finish that in a week and get a leg up on my yearly goal.
It took me a month to work through this.
I'm not entirely sure how Compton-Burnett ended up on my radar. I vaguely recall hearing that her work is considered unadaptable, and that intrigued me enough to make an impulse buy, but I dove in with zero context. Within a couple pages I was totally lost. Most of the novel is just incredibly long dialogue scenes where high society types sling barbs at each other in the most archaic dialogue I've ever read. I could g
It took me a month to work through this.
I'm not entirely sure how Compton-Burnett ended up on my radar. I vaguely recall hearing that her work is considered unadaptable, and that intrigued me enough to make an impulse buy, but I dove in with zero context. Within a couple pages I was totally lost. Most of the novel is just incredibly long dialogue scenes where high society types sling barbs at each other in the most archaic dialogue I've ever read. I could g
Read
January 8, 2025Reading this was like being stuck in a closet with 6-10 victorian nobles on cocaine who won’t shut the fuck up (complimentary and derogatory)
November 14, 2013
There is a sense in which all her mature novels are the same, in that her style and settings do not change, but each book brings a different set of characters, who while resembling previous old men, or children, or servants, are entirely individual. Bartle is probably the best of her cheeky-yet-vulnerable young menservants, Tabby is the dimmest of her housemaids, and Rose and Viola are wonderfully drawn children who can tell the devastating truth in the calmest way. This is one of the most inward looking of her novels - all the characters belong to one of two families, and several to both in that peculiarly incestuous way she excels in. If you love I C-B, then you'll love this. If not, there's no hope for you.
August 29, 2015
This book was a total surprise to me---not so much in its tone and content, but in my rather muted reaction to it.
I love early to mid-20th Century novels of manners and expected to be captivated by this quiet, slow-paced family story. Ivy Compton-Burnett's reputation also led me to expect a lot, but instead of finding the book contemplative, quiet and satisfying, I found it rather slow-paced and, ultimately predictable.
Netgalley provided me with a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
I love early to mid-20th Century novels of manners and expected to be captivated by this quiet, slow-paced family story. Ivy Compton-Burnett's reputation also led me to expect a lot, but instead of finding the book contemplative, quiet and satisfying, I found it rather slow-paced and, ultimately predictable.
Netgalley provided me with a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
Want to Read
May 7, 2018Previous: Two Worlds and Their Ways
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews