Darke

by Rick Gekoski

Overview

This critically acclaimed debut novel offers “an original and bleakly funny portrait of grief” in the singular mind and solitary life of its protagonist (The Economist).
 
Shortlisted for The McKitterick Prize and The Author’s Club Best First Novel Award

Cranky and reclusive, ageing and widowed, Dr. James Darke has expelled himself from the world. He writes compulsively in his ‘coming of old age’ journal; he eats little, drinks and smokes a lot; he tries to console himself with the wisdom of the great thinkers and poets, yet finds nothing but disappointment. And yet, cracks of light start to appear in his carefully managed darkness: the tender, bruised filaments of love for his daughter and grandson.

With scalding prose, ruthless intelligence and an unforgettably vivid protagonist, Darke confronts some of humanity’s greatest and most uncomfortable questions about how we choose to live, and to die.

“A supreme example of a natural and skilled storyteller.”—Colm Toibin

“Surprising…with a warmth that is genuinely and unexpectedly moving.”—The Guardian, UK    

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781782119388
Publisher:	Canongate Books
Publication date:	01/16/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	321
File size:	7 MB

About the Author

Rick Gekoski is a writer, rare-book dealer and academic. He has written several widely praised non-fiction books including Staying Up, Tolkien's Gown, Outside of a Dog and Lost, Stolen or Shredded. This is his first novel. In 2005 he was one of the judges for the Man Booker Prize, and was then Chair of the judges for the Man Booker International Prize 2011. He teaches creative non-fiction for the Arvon Foundation, and sits on their Development Board. In 2010 he was elected a Trustee of English PEN.

Editorial Reviews

A very good storyteller

EBOOK COMMENTARY

01/29/2018
Gekoski’s debut novel (following the literary history work Nabokov’s Butterfly), about a professor isolating himself following his wife’s death, begins enticingly but ultimately falters. James Darke, retired literature professor, looks back on his courtship with and marriage to his wife, Suzy; the birth of their daughter, Lucy, and the evolution of their relationship; and his vocation as a teacher. Darke has quarantined himself from the outside world in the wake of Suzy’s death from cancer. His only meaningful encounters during this time are with Bronya, a maid hired to clean his home; these are entertaining, especially when Bronya shows a penchant for Dickens, one of Darke’s favorites. Aside from his memories, the bulk of the novel comprises Darke’s trenchant observations about life and death, education, analysis, and such pillars of literature as T.S. Eliot and William Butler Yeats. Though Darke’s ruminations about literature, his sexual awakening, and how he coped with Suzy’s suffering are high points, the book falters when Dark finally breaks his confinement to reconnect with Lucy and her son. Readers may also tire of his lengthy descriptions of his depression and his curmudgeonly view of life. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"A supreme example of a natural and gifted storyteller.

Colm Toibin

"A wondrous book with two fathers, Kingsley Amis and Dante.

Sebastian Barry

Amazing…smart, witty, poignant and unexpectedly tender.

Robert Gray

"An original and bleakly funny portrait of grief.

Economist

An unexpectedly moving and dynamic portrait of a difficult, broken man.

Booklist

I was beguiled and charmed by the vivid personality being revealed. By that, and by the fact that I couldn't stop reading. Gekoski puts words together with a sure touch and deep craftsmanship

Philip Pullman

Rick Gekoski's impressive debut novel . . . Darke is both a tender and hard-hitting examination of grief and the slow, singular healing process . . . A brilliantly vivid creation . . . life-affirming and life-shattering

The Herald

An immensely enjoyable elegy . . . done with precision and patience

The Scotsman - Stuart Kelly

A coming-of-old-age journal which is full of advice on how to live and how to die

Books to Look Out For In 2017 Irish Times

Staggeringly accomplished. Heartbreakingly true. A shockingly monumental first novel

JOHN NIVEN

A wondrous book with two fathers, Kingsley Amis and Dante

SEBASTIAN BARRY

Surprising . . . with a warmth that is genuinely and unexpectedly moving

Guardian

Stuffed with more wisdom, bile, wit and tenderness than many writers create in a lifetime. In James Darke we have a hero as troubled and eternal as King Lear . . . And in Rick Gekoski we have a late-flowering genius of a novelist who proves it's never too late to start a glittering career in fiction

The Times

A very good storyteller

Sunday Telegraph

An original and bleakly funny portrait of grief

Economist

Stuffed with more wisdom, bile, wit and tenderness than many writers create in a lifetime. In James Darke we have a hero as troubled and eternal as King Lear . . . And in Rick Gekoski we have a late-flowering genius of a novelist who proves it's never too late to start a glittering career in fiction

The Times

A very good storyteller

Sunday Telegraph

An unexpectedly moving and dynamic portrait of a difficult, broken man.

Booklist

Rick Gekoski's amazing novel Darke, Dr. James Darke chronicles his self-imposed exile. The tale is appropriately dark, but also smart, witty, poignant and unexpectedly tender.

Shelf Awareness

Makes for dark, thrilling reading . . . In James Darke, Gekoski has created a powerful, raging voice

Spectator

Debut delight . . . Just how this gleefully conjured misanthrope came to wall himself off from the world is the mystery at the heart of a singular first novel that evolves into a moving meditation on loss and redemption

Mail on Sunday

A tale about a spiky and irresistibly funny retired teacher who incarcerates himself in his own house

top 50 page-turners Sunday Times

★ 10/15/2017
Entertainingly irascible and curmudgeonly, thin-skinned and misanthropic, Dr. James Darke lives alone after the death of his wife, feigning deafness to avoid conversing with the handyman, firing a cleaning lady who's become too bubbly, fuming with upper-crust British prejudices, and behaving badly toward the neighbors' barking dog. He was ever thus—as a schoolmaster, he got in trouble for keeping notes on his students' various defects as a way to remember their names—but now he's worse. He's even told George, the only person he could consider a friend, to collect his mail and then toss it, and he's not speaking to daughter Lucy, whom he nevertheless recalls tenderly throughout the narrative. He's also started keeping a coming-of-old-age journal, not an entirely bad idea. But when George shows up, pleading with him to respond to his daughter's increasingly distraught letters, Darke does something of a turnaround, getting past Lucy's initial anger and frustration to bond with his grandson. If that sounds sentimental, it isn't; this is a tough-minded and bracing novel about life's final moments from rare book dealer and academic Gekoski, writing his first novel, and it's a success. VERDICT A page-turning portrait of the most difficult character you'll be glad to claim as a friend.

Library Journal