An array of dysfunctional characters presented with warmth and liking, doing strange things. ( )

Now this is a hard one to rate. First of all, it had almost no plot. That may be exaggerating it a mite, but everything that happened seemed mundane and very little was explained. For example, there's a scene around page 275 in which one of the characters arrives at a dinner party because he was elected as Chairman of some committee. Only a measly 400 pages later we actually find out (as an afterthought) what the committee is about and that it has very little to do with the plot (or with anything).

That's what makes rating the book difficult. On one hand there was no point to it, it hardly really warranted 838 pages and, as the ending implied (if I may spoil it somewhat), everything happened by random chance. The characters randomly went howling-at-the-moon crazy (possessed by the ghost of a 500-year-old jester) and just as casually turned back to whatever constituted normal for them. On the other hand, the writing was excellent as were the characters (not even the Goth and the Teen got on my nerves too much), there was ample time for development character-wise after all. It was darkly funny and a bit sad, which is probably my favorite mixture. About halfway through I even had to rush online to purchase a couple more books by Barker. On the third hand, I tend to love these love-it-or-hate-it kind of books (maybe I try to rationalize them more than the average reader, i.e. "Since I already wasted so much time and money on it, would I rather be satisfied with it or not?"), but it's clearly not for everyone.

Some random thoughts to fit the motif du jour:
- As a friend of cats, I wasn't too happy with the highly unethical treatment of Manny the Cat.
- Barker got die (singular) and dice (plural) mixed up, as in "he felt for his five die".
- There was enough sexual tension between many characters to supply electricity for a small town and it never came to anything. Apart from that one tit fuck, I suppose.
- A couple of times the third-person narrator used the first-person word "I", which felt wrong.
- Although no one's used the tag, I found it somewhat magical realism-ish. The whelping dog in the rainy forest, e.g, wasn't actually magical, but felt similarly eerie.
- Props for mentioning the Meat Puppets and Frank Zappa.
- The use of parentheses was prodigal (which I try (unsuccessfully) to parody here), but—unlike usually—I liked it. It added something. As did the separate fonts for thoughts and translations.

- Sometimes there were section breaks whose purpose I couldn't quite fathom, though.
- It was one of the weirdest books I've read and I respect that, but it could have been even better. It's easy, Nic; just add plot. ( )

"...because it can now be scientifically proved that water has a memory, then why not the blood? Why not the bones, the hair and the muscles?” p.729

Yes, the past can inhabit you—and you can place yourself in the past - and the future, too.
Uncompromising and unapologetically -- I loved/lived this book. ( )

I was really looking forward to reading this book, as the cover makes it sound really interesting.

…..Elen, an enigmatic chiropodist, whose unstable husband, Dory, believes that their only son, Fleet, has been fathered by the deranged ghost of an evil, 500-year old court-jester…….a magical yet somehow instantly familiar world in which language crackles like static…..

Unfortunately, I was very disappointed. The writing style was very annoying. I felt like I was being treated like an idiot, as obvious things were explained in brackets on a regular basis.

The character build up was OK at first, but failed to develop fully. They just didn’t come across as very believable. The dialogue between the characters wasn’t very natural, and their continual misunderstandings, resulting in large gaps and then:

WHAT?

EH?

really grated on me.

The plot was very sporadic, and had no forward momentum, so I found my thougths wandering off. This happened more frequently as the book went on, and so I finally gave up 250 pages in. This is the first Booker short listed book that I have failed to complete. I agonised over whether, or not, to finish it, so checked as many other reviews as possible. I discovered that people decide they either love or hate this book very quickly. Those that dislike the book, are left even more frustrated by the ending, so as I have nearly 500 pages left to read to reach this point I think I’ll leave it there.

I would, however, still love to read a book about a 500-year old court-jester fathering a child from Kent! If you’ve seen one - let me know!! ( )

Huge disappointment. This was a very long book (838 pages) and was not worth the effort. The first half sped by quickly, as Barker's strength seems to be quirky character development. Unfortunately, that can only hold your interest until you realize that the little plot that can be found is not interesting enough to sustain the novel.

Loose strands are left all over the place and by the end you realize that a majority of the events that occurred in the book have no real purpose. The resolution, as such, that does occur is mostly uninteresting, incomplete and forced. The author tries to beg forgiveness with a page or two explaining a pithy philosophy of coincidence without meaning, but it just does not wash.

Made it all of the way through, but this book killed my desire to read for a month. ( )

The experience of reading this book can only be compared to riding a ghost train with its brake cable cut - you hurtle with increasing speed through bizarre and sometimes sinister surroundings, with the occasional flash of illumination to show you where you are. I loved it, but there's no way I can attempt a synopsis. The book, set in twenty-first-century urban-blighted England, covers the lives of an interlinked group of people, and takes in a decades-old grievance, a family feud, cowboy builders, demonic possession, the evolution of language, and illicit love and lust of all kinds. Oh, and a goth with her mouth sewn up. And all this in Barker's traditional rambling, tangential, brilliantly-overworked-metaphor'd style.

It took me about 100 pages to have the first idea of what was going on - but after that I was gripped. It's funny, eerie, good hearted and with - I think - serious things to say about modern England, under all that. Despite its length (838 pages) I am already thinking about reading it again... ( )

Darkmans, wow, where to begin?

It's the third of Nicola Barker's books set in the modern day Thames Gateway, though that isn't to say that the stories are interlinked.

At 850-odd pages of bright white paper and sans serif font it seems to be going out of its way to make it daunting to pick up. And, as I have previously stated, too much sans serif font on paper tends to give me a bit of a sore head. But what made this doorstop of a novel so eminently readable is the space. Literally and metaphorically.

The text is well spaced on the page, letting the words breathe, letting them find a natural rhythm. The sentences often break off to reveal the thoughts in the heads of the characters "as and when" they occur, giving the whole novel a sense of immediacy.

And my, what characters they are. Beede and Kane are father and son, though it's clear from the very first page that their relationship is strained. Elen, Isidore, and Fleet are a family living in a new build house that is falling down around their ears. If life wasn't difficult enough, Isidore - or Dory - keeps having some very odd turns. Kelly Broad is a foul-mouthed chav who breaks her leg and finds God. Geraldine is her goth cousin with a prodigious bosom who has sown her own mouth shut with black thread. Gaffar Celik is a Turkish Kurd who strikes up a friendship with Kane, who has an all-consuming fear of salad.

Added to the mix is a mysterious doctor from several centuries ago, a court jester, a dodgy builder, a semi-paralysed dog named Michelle, and a glue-sniffer-turned-academic called Winifred.

There is a supernatural element to the story that I won't go into because (a) I don't want to spoil anything for anyone and (b) I'm really not sure I can explain it. I'm not entirely sure that it isn't superfluous to requirement, but it definitely adds another dimension to a many-dimensioned story. And this story really is an absolute joy to read, from start to finish. For a hefty bugger, this really is a surprisingly readable book, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Will it win the Booker? Somehow, I doubt it. I think it's too much of a Marmite sort of a book - people will either love it or hate it. And the shortlist is particularly strong this year it seems. But I would like to see it win, because it's the kind of book that everyone should just have a go at, then enjoy the argument in the pub later. :) ( )

A strange book, which can be funny, moving, thought-provoking – as well as frustrating. But then it is set in Ashford, which is all of those things and less. The plot is hard to summarise, although as a reader you’ll probably be more preoccupied with unpicking the Byzantine web of connections which links the cast. The nearest thing to a central character is Kane, a layabout and amiable drug-dealer; he has a strained relationship with his father Beede, who works at the local hospital. Both of them are infatuated with a chiropodist called Elen, whose half-German husband Dory suffers from schizophrenic episodes during which he appears to be possessed by the spirit of a medieval jester. Their son, Fleet, has preternatural awareness and is building a fourteenth-century French cathedral out of matchsticks. A Kurdish immigrant, Gaffar, observes them all with sardonic weariness, and chats up Kelly, a sympathetic chavette who breaks her leg and finds God. I could go on, but my eyes are watering as it is.

As an ensemble piece, it starts off something like a prose version of Magnolia. But there is more going on here, and considerably more weirdness than a froggy April shower. ‘Darkmans’ is archaic thieves’ slang for ‘night‘; but Barker (who never explains this) takes it as a name for the medieval jester mentioned above, whose shadowy presence lurks behind all the other characters, occasionally breaking through with sinister results. Something is being said, it seems, about how close to us our history is, lying unrecognised beneath the surface of the present. Ashford, in this context, makes the ideal setting.

A lot has been said about Barker’s use of language. Here too, the past is forever barging its way into the present, albeit in a way which I found somewhat trivial. Characters with trouble keeping their grip on reality are likely to slip accidentally into German, Latin or Middle French. The reminder that our language is a collection of fossils is crucial, but the tricks Barker uses to make the point have been pulled off more effectively by other writers (most obviously Joyce).

In other ways, too, I found the language disappointing, even slapdash. It’s exhilarating to see such a crazy jumble of characters and plot points; but when the same principles are applied to sentences it too often comes over as just a poorly-controlled prose style. Her love of parenthetical asides can make her appealingly conversational, but after too many you end up with sentences that seem to be made of elbows.

****
And Beede (who hadn’t, quite frankly, really considered all of these lesser implications – Mid-Kent Water plc didn’t run itself, after all) found himself involved (didn’t he owe the condemned properties that much, at least?) in a crazy miasma of high-level negotiations, conservation plans, archaeological investigations and restoration schemes, in a last-ditch attempt to rectify the environmental devastation which (let’s face it) he himself had partially engendered.
****

A few sentences like this are quite fun; but a dozen per page is sometimes an effort. There are brackets here by the hundred. I also became a little frustrated by the way no one ever ‘says’ anything in this book. On one double page opened at random, I find:

****
‘So you think I could do better?’ he smiled…
‘Why not?’ she demanded…
‘And it ain’t only me as thinks so, neither,’ she continued…
‘Your poor old mum?!’ he grinned.
‘He’s been schmoozing my mum, Kane,’ Kelly exclaimed…
‘Well he can’t fancy her that much,’ she sniffed…
‘The ignorant fuck,’ she scowled.
‘He didn’t shag her,’ Kane repeated.
‘God, no,’ Kane muttered…
‘Anyway,’ Kane maintained…
‘Her tits are amazing,’ Kane added…
****

You get the idea (though in fairness, there are a couple of ‘said’s in there too). Also needlessly erratic is the paragraph spacing, which appears to be entirely random – sometimes we get a whole new section halfway through a conversation.

None of this disguises the fact that when the writing is held under control, Barker is awesomely impressive. Her treatment of characters’ internal dialogue, for one thing, can achieve strange new effects. She often skips to a new line to give us the unedited thoughts of whoever she is describing, which form a colloquial counterpoint to the action.

****
He glanced down –

Damn

The tip of his spliff had dropped off into his lap. And there was still a small –

Fuck!

– ember . . .
He cuffed it from his jeans and down on to the floor. He checked the fabric – no hole, but a tiny, brown . . .

Bugger

He took a final, deep drag –

Nope . . .
Dead

– then tried to push the damp dog-end into the ashtray, but the ashtray, it seemed, was already full to capacity.
****

At times like this the text reminded me of a comic strip, in the way such ‘thought bubbles’ are pulled out of the narrative. It takes some getting used to, but she convinces you it’s an effective tool. Part of the reason it seems so effective is that her characters are the book’s greatest draw and its biggest reward. This becomes clear once you realise the plot’s inexplicable but that you still loved the novel. Some of the throwaway jokes are excellent (Beede has ‘a stare which could make an owl crave Optrex’), and one scene detailing a horrendous middle-class dinner party is a comic tour-de-force.

Like the mysterious Darkmans, Barker believes that humour can ‘often be a direct route to power’, and there is something serious at work behind the jokes – even if the ending leaves you unsure how it all technically came about. What you are likely to be more sure about is what an unusual and enjoyable way she has of asking the central question: if we can’t understand our history, then how can we understand each other? Because despite the one-liners, the image that stayed with me was that of Kane and his father walking away from each other after another halting argument:

****
They both turned. They both paused. They both took one measured step forward, then another; like a pair of old adversaries engaging in a duel, but without weapons, or seconds, or anybody to call.
**** ( )

http://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2008/06... ( )

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.

This review also appears on my blog Literary License (short reviews, real opinions): litlicense.blogspot.com ( )

Nicola Barker said something about the reader having to work hard with her 800+ pages here and in a way she's right. It's hard to follow in places, especially the end where I am still mystified and will either have to do some rereading or see what others have worked out. Regardless of that I found it a book that held my interest. While there is the inexplicable and confusing in it, there is also the recognisable along with a style that reminds me of Peter Hoeg and DBC Pierre - i.e. full of energy, humour and originality. There's also a similarity with Zadie Smith, even though in the end the three are pretty different, Hoeg being the nearest with his sustained magical mysteries.

One thing that irked me a bit was the punctuation, especially the paragraphing. I can see Barker being innovative in some of her veering from conventional layout but I can't see any consistent method in her approach. Sometimes she begins a new paragraph for a new speaker or description and sometimes she doesn't. The outcome is that rereading is sometimes needed to find out who's speaking. I write to the publishers asking them about this but didn't receive any reply - a pity. I'd like to know what's behind the layout. ( )

Am finally and somewhat sadly at the end of Nicola Barkers Darkmans, which has kept me happy and occupied over the past ... how many weeks is it? I've lost track.

Despite being 838 pages long it never felt a long or arduous read, maybe because I was enjoying the joyfully meandering narration so much.

To talk about the plot of the novel is almost beside the point. Yes, there are story threads that run through, but they seem almost incidental, and not all are gathered neatly together at the end leaving the reader still caught in the mystery of who and how these folks in a modern Kent town become possessed (it seems) by characters from the past. When I was a kid I loved time-slip novels like Alan Garner's The Owl Service, and Phillipa Pearce's Tom's Midnight Garden, and always squeeze my eyes up tight to try to see a place as it was hundred of years ago, so this aspect of the novel greatly appealed to me.

The action doesn't (for the most part) move out of a tiny geographical area, the town of Ashford in Kent. When I've mentioned this to British friends over the past week or two, I've seen their eyes boggle in disbelief that anyone would want to set a novel there.

It's a nowhere sort of place, a transportation hub, serving the Eurostar service to continental Europe and torn up by roads. Whatever charm and history it had in the past has become pretty much obliterated in the interest of "development". But Ashford with its bypasses and Tesco's and substandard modern housing estates, is arguably the main character of the book, and the past comes back to haunt ... with a vengeance.

There's a relatively small human cast for a book this size, the interrelationships between those individuals are throughly explored.

Beede and Kane are a father and son with apartments in the same house while remaining essentially estranged from each other. Beede works in the hospital laundry and is fascinated by the past. Kane deals in prescription drugs, and is haunted by the attempted suicide of his mother many years before.

Then there's (let's see ... and do forgive the brackets, one tends to write in long run-on sentence with breathless asides after reading this) Kane's larger than life ex-girlfriend, Kelly Broad, (a girl of the sort we would have called, not very kindly, "a right little scrubber" in my day); Gaffar, a Kurdish refugee who comes to work for Kane and is terrified (to the point of fainting!) of salad leaves; Elen, Beede's chiropodist (who may or may not be a witch); Isadore, her husband, barely clinging to sanity at times; their son, Fleet, building a model of a cathedral from matchsticks. And several others including, the builder from hell, an art forger, and an incontinent spaniel with paralysed back legs.

Oh yes, and there's also a shadowy character from the past, a sort of lord of misrule, who appears to be playing some rather nasty practical jokes on the characters.

There's an awful lot of talk but in the sharp dialogue and in the asides of the completely garrulous narrator. (I kept thinking that it would be fun to see the novel written as a hypertext novel - it would be a fraction of its length without the detours!)

I came away from the book with more questions than answers. But I came away satisfied and I came away wanting more. (And disagreeing vehemently with Chairman of the Booker Prize committee, Howard Davies' snippy comment about how it could have been more tightly edited ... did he get what Barker was trying to do?).

I can't think of another novel that manages to be both brilliantly comic and hauntingly sinister at the same time. Darkman's also has its finger firmly on the (British) social pulse, while also being startlingly innovative in form and style.

Should it have won the Booker? I wouldn't have been at all unhappy if it had. (Though I still think Animal's People and Mr. Pip will be more popular choices with a more general readership.) ( )

This is a sensational novel. Utterly assured, deeply subversive, supremely involving. Barker clears a space in your mind and then inhabits it, seeking congruencies at every turn, in much the same way as she portrays one of her characters as doing. It’s extremely clever – no, brilliant. The authorial voice is virtuosic, echoing an entirely justified confidence in the book against the background of the eclectic literary heritage it richly but subtly evokes (say from Richardson to the graphic novel via Dickens and Joyce) and the plot is superbly, seemingly effortlessly constructed. The best english novel of the year – only Coetzee, Adam Thorpe and Tom McCarthy come close. Good lord! It’s on the Booker shortlist… ( )

Darkmans is superb, well worth its 800+ pages. Its length may seem daunting, but it moves incredibly fast and, as one reviewer noted somewhere, you're left wanting more when you finish.

This book has the potential to win the Booker -- it is incredible. The writing is superlative, the characterization simply amazing. It is truly one of a kind and should not be missed by serious readers or those looking for something fresh and new on the bookstore shelves.

I won't rehash the plot; I don't know if it's possible to provide a seamless synopsis with this novel -- it's another one of those you simply must experience on your own. The main focus in this novel is the missing element of history and its effect on modern society. Barker has set her novel in a town (Ashford) that has undergone some changes in the name of progress not always for the better. Some of the greatest moments in this story come from a five year-old boy, who seems to be infused with knowledge that no one can explain -- history speaks to and through him as it does to a couple of other characters in the novel. Various characters are indeed "possessed" at one time or another by the spirit of history, in the form of an historical personage named John. There is a wonderful scene in this novel, set near the coast, where one of the characters who slides in and out of reality bemoans the fact that an entire port town has gone missing. However, the thing with which I was most fascinated was the author's concentration on language. For example, on page 647, she has one of her characters asking questions about the origin and staying power of words as well as who legitimizes them, how and why. You can see that Barker is not afraid to experiment with (as she notes) "the variableness of language," throughout the book. What seems like random utterings really does have purpose, and you really don't understand it all until you get to the end.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough; it is often funny and filled with very quirky characters. If you pick this one up, don't expect to get much done while you're reading it. ( )