SuperHeroBooks - Darkmans
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List Price: $16.95
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Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780061575211
ISBN: 0061575216
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 848
Publication Date: 2007-12-01
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Release Date: 2007-11-27
Studio: Harper Perennial
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: An odd but fun novel
Comment: Darkmans appears to be about damaged or eccentric people who are thrown into everyday, mundane situations. Its bleak, yet funny even though I don't understand what the book was really about -beyond what I described in that first sentence.
The cast of characters comprise of Daniel Beede, his drug dealing son Kane, his endlessly profane ex-girlfriend Kelly and Gaffar, a Kurdish repairman who, after a fight with Kane over the seriousness of Kelly's injuries (she broke her leg falling off a wall), comes to work for him as a courier and also befriends Beede who, of course, shares a house with the son he barely talks to.
Beede's life is one shaped by things of the past -as most lives are, but seems to be haunted by the theft of some antique tiles, and has also embarked on a mysterious project with the forger named Peta Borough that seems to involve strange duplications and research into John Scogin, jester in the court of Edward IV.
Then there is the matter of Fleet, son of Elen and Dory, an eerily gifted and strangely prescient boy who builds a model of the Cathedral of Saint-Cecile with matchsticks. To the growing alarm of Elen and Dory (who seems to suffer from a mental illness somewhere between narcolepsy and schizophrenia), Fleet knows impossible amounts of information about the same John Scogin that Beede is researching. And during Dory's hazy episodes, Fleet calls his father "John".
There isn't much plot, but it does feature an incentive style prose, underlined with some very funny elements -like the fact that everyone appears to know a crap load of miscellaneous information on a wide variety of subjects.
Its an unusual novel to say the least, yet one that I could not put down.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A confusing mix
Comment: Primarily about the estranged relationship between Beede and his drug-pusher layabout son, the layers of their relationship and back history are peeled away amidst the olde English spirit possession of Beede's Germanic friend Isidore.
And that's where the story spirals out of control as Barker tries to add too many ingredients into her mix. The supernatural elements didn't quite gel... After a while I got really irritated with the constant intrusion of the characters' thoughts even as they converse at cross purposes with each other...
I get the idea the John Scogin, King Edward IV's court jester, is the Darkmans referred to, and that his spirit possesses Isidore to do crazy things, and that in some weird metaphysical twist, his son Fleet, who seems borderline autistic, is actually an older spirit in a 'The Child is the Father of Man' fashion (apologies to Wordsworth), but I must admit that by the end of 838 pages, I was much too tired to care either way.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A little disappointing.....
Comment: There's somethings in this book that made it enjoyable, and some things that ruin it, unfortunately. I loved the humor and the characters in this book, some scenes made me even laugh out loud. It almost reminds me of Confederacy of Dunces. The downfall of this book is the length, I think it could've gone through some serious editing, or even the way the incidents are arranged. Through most of the book Barker is building up to something, but I wasn't sure what. I was expecting something crazy at the end, something that would tie all the randomness together, but it landed flat at the end. Now, even though it's too long and there's a little lack of a plot, I would still consider this a decent read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: 3.5 stars: "Because it doesn't serve our purpose to see the whole picture"
Comment: This tale of madness, confidence tricksters, arcane learning, and characters overcome by ennui in a dreary Kentish exurb where the chainstores and tract homes have nearly obliterated charm, tradition, and Englishness takes up 838 pages of smallish, determinedly severe Helvetica-style font. It's a challenge to read, and while often hilarious in particular scenes that send up the Broad family, a louche set of low-lifes with unfortunately a bit of cash, it does take a very long time to move the intricate plot and many characters along their intersecting paths.
As one of a few dissembling figures puts it late on: "And perhaps I was an unwitting midwife to something, [. . .] but if I was, then it was something that was already born." She dissuades another character, who's encountered rather demonic happenings, from thinking that such crazy occurrences mean any grand convergence. Magicians, priests, psychics and those who fool us, she insists, "play on the universality of human experience, on how bland, how predictable, how 'homogenous' we all really are." (825) Yet, her interlocutor "didn't seem entirely convinced," and I agree. Barker's on to the energy underlying seemingly random events, the "kismet" of crossed destinies, and our eager wishes to make patterns where they may not be.
There's enough strangeness within these pages, with Johan Huizinga's "Autumn of the Middle Ages" discussed at welcome if awkwardly inserted length, with other disquisitions elaborating upon matters such as prana yoga, Flannery O'Connor's peacocks, the Kurdish sect of the Darwasin and their fear of lettuce, Renaissance polymath Andrew Boarde, and court jester John Scogin. Rather unbelievable that many of the characters, given their otherwise suspect literacy, would engage in elevated and extended discourse on recondite lore ad infinitum, but a fantasy world I'd welcome more than the usual diversions peddled them and us to pass the time! I admit not all the patterns cohere at the end; I was disappointed in more than one thread that did not blend into the larger pattern, but this may be deliberate: the book has as many loose ends as it does tied knots in terms of its narrative resolutions.
Perhaps there's room for another installment? As it is, "Darklands" certainly raises more questions than it answers even within 838 pages. This is the third in a series of her novels that explore English life along the southern inland estuaries, and I suspect we have not heard the last of many rambunctious voices. The novel is both more learned and less daunting than other reviewers may have let on. It's not as consistently uproarious as some nervous publicists want to assure readers of its manic scenes. A few of these, starring the Broad clan, make great moments early on, but the general mood darkens as the novel progresses and inexplicable visitations wreak havoc on the hapless inhabitants of dismal Ashford. Possessions, attacks, and subterfuge loom large as the plots thicken and congeal. Surely the Watcher of the Woods in a splendid chapter with a pregnant terrier that appears to have landed within this already uneasy story as if from an ancient Green Man legend, shows Barker's capable of surprises-- this section I found much more dazzling than any other part of this novel. It stands out like a vivid nightmare half-recalled.
So, as long as you can handle a sprawling, extensively erudite, and often baffling and open-ended farrago of information, rumor, visions, inspiration, insanity, and stupidity, "Darkmans" may entertain you. Barker solves much but not all, so be forewarned. And, you may not look at fleas, lettuce, podiatry, or Kurds the same way again.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Strange (in a good way)
Comment: Reading Darkmans is a lot like trying to put a jigsaw puzzle together when you only have every other piece. The complex cast of characters interacts in ever stranger ways as the novel progresses. Reality takes frequent breaks, and the plot pieces Barker gives us just don't fit together. Nevertheless, Barker's high-speed prose kept my interest for 800+ pages, and there was never any question that I would finish the book (and quickly). Though thoroughly entertained while reading, I was extremely disappointed at the end of the book when the puzzle remained completely impenetrable. Darkmans was short-listed for the 2007 Man Booker Prize.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Darkmans is an exhilarating, extraordinary examination of the ways in which history can play jokes on us all... If History is just a sick joke which keeps on repeating itself, then who exactly might be telling it, and why? Could it be John Scogin, Edward IV's infamous court jester, whose favorite pastime was to burn people alive - for a laugh? Or could it be Andrew Boarde, Henry VIII's physician, who kindly wrote John Scogin's biography? Or could it be a tiny Kurd called Gaffar whose days are blighted by an unspeakable terror of - uh - salad? Or a beautiful, bulimic harpy with ridiculously weak bones? Or a man who guards Beckley Woods with a Samurai sword and a pregnant terrier? Darkmans is a very modern book, set in Ashford [a ridiculously modern town], about two very old-fashioned subjects: love and jealousy. It's also a book about invasion, obsession, displacement and possession, about comedy, art, prescription drugs and chiropody. And the main character? The past, which creeps up on the present and whispers something quite dark - quite unspeakable - into its ear. The third of Nicola Barker's narratives of the Thames Gateway, Darkmans is an epic novel of startling originality.
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