21st Century Literature discussion

Our group read for March, This Thing of Darkness, was the debut novel of Harry Thompson, published in 2005 only months before his death in November of that year at the age of 45.

Set in the period from 1828 to 1865, it is a historical novel of sea-faring adventure, telling the fictionalised biography of Robert FitzRoy, who was given command of HMS Beagle halfway through her first voyage. He subsequently captained her during the vessel’s famous second voyage (to South America, the Galapagos isles, and New Zealand), on which Charles Darwin travelled as his companion. Not only Darwin became a scientist: Fitzroy himself is the inventor/a pioneer of meteorology and weather forecasts, and later served as governor of New Zealand.

The novel was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Its title comes from Prospero's line "This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine" in Act V, Scene 1 of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. In the US, it was published under the title "To the Edge of the World", either as a single volume or split up into three.

Robert Colvile, writing in The Observer, said: “The bare facts of Charles Darwin's voyage to the Galapagos, and his formulation of the theory of natural selection, are well known. It takes an expert author to make a new pattern from such familiar cloth, yet this is precisely what Harry Thompson has done. […] While rarely lyrical, Thompson's prose drives the reader through the 750 pages with the unstoppable force of an ocean current, fusing brisk action, challenging ideas and gut-wrenching emotion into an astonishingly assured debut - and memorial.” (no online link found, quote taken from wikipedia)

Roz Caveney in The Independent, while praising the novel's gripping plot, criticizes the novel's lack of complete historical correctness in the way it portrays the religious and political views of Fitzroy and Darwin: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...

Another positive review (but beware spoilers!): https://www.livemint.com/Opinion/H2iE...

More on Robert Fitzroy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_...
On Charles Darwin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles...
On the famous second voyage of the HMS Beagle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_...

Obviously, please avoid these links if you don't want parts of the plot spoiled for you, or check them out after you're done with the novel. I've also avoided linking to more magazine reviews, since they seem to be full of spoilers, including how the book ends. Since this is not just a novel of ideas, but also meant to be a gripping adventure, I'd personally like to avoid knowing too much in advance.

Are you planning on joining us?

What are your first impressions?

Please kindly use spoiler tags for all plot spoilers, and please indicate up to which chapter you've read when commenting.

Thanks Eva. I read the book late last year and won't be rereading this soon, but I should be able remember enough to contribute to the discussion and I did enjoy it a lot.

It looks like I'll have to scramble to get a copy of "To the Edge of the World" on this side of the pond. My library shows 19 copies... "on order "! Strange for a 2005 novel.

I'm along but have a dreadful amount of reading to catch up since I am only at 40%. This was a great pick BTW.

I just bought the book on Amazon where it got 4.7 stars out of 5

Sam wrote: "I'm along but have a dreadful amount of reading to catch up since I am only at 40%. This was a great pick BTW."

Haha, we're only just starting it, so I think you're actually ahead of everyone! I'm glad you're enjoying it. 🙂

@Wim: yes, and the ebook version is also very affordable (around 5 EUR here), so I think that's easier than trying to get it via library. I prefer ebooks for big tomes, anyway - they're nicer to hold comfortably.

I'm about 60%, and haven't hit the Galapagos yet! I'm loving the energy, the crazy conditions, the tug between interpretations of Christianity and also observation, the shifting ideas as they try to craft a coherent whole that also makes sense with their assumptions and beliefs. The contradictions from one idea to the next for individuals rings true even if not fully factual. And my oh my the plot!!!

Thank you, Jenna - that sounds very exciting!

I’m just over half way through. Am amazed at the detail.It has been really thoroughly researched. The discussions between Fitzroy and Darwin are fascinating. It’s a great mix of adventure,science and theology.

Not sure if others would consider this to contain spoilers? Flagging it so you can decide for yourselves!

Okay I'm now in Part 5 and starting to flag in my enthusiasm. Some of the invented dialogue that contains Darwin's racism seems anachronistic to me (eugenics before the fact) and I wonder if its true to his character or if he is being turned into a foil for FitzRoy. I feel that Thomson is arguing with me (or lecturing) that it is better to use the bible to support a moral if scientifically incorrect world view than to apply scientific evidence to support racist ideas. Why should one of these be right? A bit more dispassion in the authorial voice would bring out all the ways in which thinking through things originates with your own prejudices, sometimes to leading to ideas that improve the human condition and sometimes to ideas that are destructive. Here comes the real spoiler - (view spoiler)[ after all FitzRoy's experiment at proving that the natives were fully human was not a boon to the individuals involved. (hide spoiler)]

Could you please use the

< spoiler > text you want to hide < / spoiler >

tag? (Just remove the spaces.) This will hide spoilers so people can't see them accidentally while skimming. 🙂

It's interesting to hear the various opinions on their discussions. I haven't made my mind up yet.

Eva wrote: "Could you please use the text you want to hide tag? (Just remove the spaces.) This will hide spoilers so people can't see them accidentally while skimming. 🙂
"

Thank you for pointer!!

I had no problems with the portrayal of Darwin, after all he is only expressing ideas which were commonplace in Victorian society, and showing his weaknesses made him seem more rounded. For me what did seem a little implausible were the adventure story descriptions of some of the sea stories, but without that the book would have been a lot duller.

Hugh wrote: "I had no problems with the portrayal of Darwin, after all he is only expressing ideas which were commonplace in Victorian society, and showing his weaknesses made him seem more rounded. For me what..."

Thank you Hugh, I did not mean that I minded seeing Darwin's racism, just I had always been under the impression that he tried not to generalize natural selection to humans - and that the later application as "social darwinism" eventually gave rise to eugenics, which was a bit of a bridge to far for Darwin. Because of my prior assumptions, those conversations felt stilted and anachronistic. I heard the author imaging Darwin's voice, not Darwin's voice. So from a writing perspective they broke through the suspension of disbelief and threw me out of the story. But the truth is I have only read pieces of Origin of Species and what I remember from school may well be superseded by new research, I'm definitely not an expert!

Yes, social darwinism had nothing to do with the historical Darwin nor his views. In addition, he saw all humans as equal and was an abolitionist, strongly opposed to slavery as an utterly revolting, immoral and heart-breaking practice. He also explicitly argued against the prevalent view back then that we are not all the same species, which was used to justify slavery back then: https://medium.com/science-and-philos...

In the book mentioned in the article, which he wrote specifically to address our own human origins and development, he calls genetic differences between various human "races" so incredibly minute as to be utterly negligible. Darwin himself was never a Darwinist.

But then it's a novel inspired by history, not a biography, so I don't think it necessarily has to be accurate in portrayals of historical people. The author seems to have been more concerned with modern commentary: I've heard that much of what Darwin and the general say in the book is taken verbatim from speeches given by e.g. Tony Bair, so it seems that he's more projecting the present onto a historical canvas, rather than going for realism.

This is certainly spurring me to do some further research! I am going to have to put more Darwin on my TBR list. I found a quote from 1971 about how men are "more courageous, pugnacious and energetic than woman with a more inventive genius. His brain is absolutely larger - the formation of her skull is said to be intermediate between the child and the man." Which goes to Hugh's point about being a child of his times. But also lots of evidence that he abhorred slavery, and maybe saw races as variation but understood not species.

Anyone else disappointed that he failed to describe more about FitzRoy's scientific work with weather and steam engines in favor of his failures in missionary work and politics? (view spoiler)[ Maybe the near death in New Zealand was more adventurous, but there is no justification for why Darwin puts FitzRoy up for the Royal Academy, and it seemed totally out of the blue, and he uses the meeting for them to argue again! (hide spoiler)]

I like the way Darwin’s views and understanding of the world change and develop through his observations and his discussions with Fitzroy. Both men come across as thoughtful and questioning. Although some of the views expressed seem shocking, we see their fundamental goodness through their actions.
Am enjoying the adventures as they bring the story to life. He is good on the rigours of Navy life.

Adam Smith said he saw more differentiation between dogs than between people.

Still plodding along, quite happily, I might add. It is the number of books and the amount of reading I have that has slowed me, not the quality of the book. I enjoyed the comments on the intellectual discussions of the characters, especially Darwin and Fitzroy, but I think it is the action/adventure aspect of the book that makes us
more appreciate those discussions in context. I feel I have the pleasure of reading adventure pulp under the pretense of a higher goal, plus I think the those discussions (contrasted with the characters' behaviors while on the journey) helps to bring life to the book, leaving us with a nicely visualized picture of the journey and period as a whole, even if not exactly accurate. I was comparing samples of the writing with Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle and found the Darwin a wonderful supplment for further reading. It is quite readable and gives us a look at the mind of Darwin, the naturalist as well as showing more of his opinions. . I also looked at Fitzroy's Narrative of the surveying voyages of His Majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle, between the years 1826 and 1836 Volume I. - Proceedings of the First Expedition, 1826-1830 for further perspective and found his point of view adds even more to the picture. I wish I had the time to delve into the last two volumes more but after I have set this aside, it is good to know where I get another taste if interested in the future. Both are on Gutenberg.

Reading this is going slowly for me, but I'm really enjoying the atmosphere and details about the Tierra del Fuego area. Fascinating. I wonder how much of this is taken from the journals of the explorers, and how much is invented?

Catherine wrote: "Reading this is going slowly for me, but I'm really enjoying the atmosphere and details about the Tierra del Fuego area. Fascinating. I wonder how much of this is taken from the journals of the exp..."

I cannot fully answer the question since I only scanned specific elements in those journals in comparison. IMO, Thompson has used material from the journals and whatever other sources he had to craft an adventure narrative, fleshed out with believable characters and full of topical discussions we would find entertaining today. In creating that entertaining narrative, Thompson allowed himself to imagine and create. An example would be Darwin's philosophical talk with the Argentine general during the execution of prisoners during Darwin's overland journey. That is created though supposedly based on the experience of another and then related to Darwin as hearsay.

I would liken this to Mantel's Cromwell. There is a great deal of imaginative invention employed to tell a good story. The story is the interpretation of the author, so another author might have a contradictory interpretation using the same facts. But the root facts are what make the story interesting in the first place and the author has fictionalized dramatic, temporal and causal links to make them palatable. I look at this as a good adventure story that would make a nice starting point for any reader wanting to explore further.

Very interesting, thank you!

Caution: spoilers.

Finally finished!
I enjoyed this very much. I was familiar with Darwin's story, but not Fitzroy's. These two characters really come to life in in the book. Darwin turns out to be a bit of a jerk, interestingly, and Fitzroy is surely his own worst enemy. The Fuegians were just fascinating -- now extinct I gather. I'm glad that the author made the choice to keep on going after the voyage, all the way to Darwin's publication and Fitroy's weather forecasting. It is long, but rewards patience.

I just started this one - it's going to take me a few months to get through it but I plan to read the discussion posts (carefully avoiding spoilers) and post my thoughts at the end.

For now, just a few chapters in, I'm finding the writing to be excellent. I've read a few historical novels in the last few years and for whatever reason most of them seem to be set on the seas or have sections involving sailing ships, but this is still one of the best of them. I'm looking forward to getting deeper into the story - I feel as though I haven't even scratched the surface yet.

I finished - it look me over seven months! I enjoyed the book, and took my time with it. Each chapter felt like its own self-contained story, although of course there are character arcs that last the entire book.

I found myself looking up people. places and events in Wikipedia frequently while I was reading and I was amazed to find that just about everything in the book really happened! The author's Afterword does confess a few liberties, many of which I would not have guessed (although Sullivan showing up to save Jemmy's bacon seemed like an obvious embellishment).

It was a terrific read and I ended up rating the book 4 stars although for while I was considering 5.