Rating: 
Summary: engaging story by talented young British writer
Review: One of Britain's best young novelists is finally in print in the US. This is a wonderful novel, part-fairy tale, part gritty survival drama, that uses mystical tales to portray the suffering of manic depression. It is a real page-turner, and can be enjoyed just as a "good read", or on a deeper level. Based loosely on the life of Sylvia Plath, the book takes place in London and the American South, and explores the complicated relationship between Britons and Americans. Overall it is an immensely enjoyable and moving story.
Rating:
Summary: The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
Review: This is a mesmeric, haunting novel, and for those of you who are fooled into thinking this is primarily about mental illness...Think and READ again. You have fallen into a sort of trap set by this extremely subtle, almost wily, author. Yes, mental illness is one thematic level on which one can read this, in so many ways, disturbing and original book.-"And when the ink begins to write/ It makes the paper black and white."-The poem from Benedick's visionary mother pops up at beginning and end of the narrative. Why?
Read aright, the story of Benedick's quest interlarded with his mother's dark tales WILL keep you up at night. To come to the conclusion that all she and Benedick need or needed is/was some psychotropic drug like Lithium is to say the same of, say, Shelley or Van Gogh. If you think the ending, at first glance, is simplistic, you're right. But if you think that it undermines the the otherwise terror and fairy tale ridden narrative, then you're reading it on the level which most adults read fairy tales: That is, you're not reading it.
For the ending is the most terrifying part of the book: a fairy tale full of fairy tales that tell us more about ourselves than we like to think. Why is the ending so almost hostilely, one might say, simplistic? Again, ask yourself, what's the line with which fairy tales, including the dark fairy tales of Benedick's mother, end? Then reread the book, as I did...if you dare!
Rating:
Summary: The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
Review: This is a mesmeric, haunting novel, and for those of you who are fooled into thinking this is primarily about mental illness...Think and READ again. You have fallen into a sort of trap set by this extremely subtle, almost wily, author. Yes, mental illness is one thematic level on which one can read this, in so many ways, disturbing and original book.-"And when the ink begins to write/ It makes the paper black and white."-The poem from Benedick's visionary mother pops up at beginning and end of the narrative. Why?
Read aright, the story of Benedick's quest interlarded with his mother's dark tales WILL keep you up at night. To come to the conclusion that all she and Benedick need or needed is/was some psychotropic drug like Lithium is to say the same of, say, Shelley or Van Gogh. If you think the ending, at first glance, is simplistic, you're right. But if you think that it undermines the the otherwise terror and fairy tale ridden narrative, then you're reading it on the level which most adults read fairy tales: That is, you're not reading it.
For the ending is the most terrifying part of the book: a fairy tale full of fairy tales that tell us more about ourselves than we like to think. Why is the ending so almost hostilely, one might say, simplistic? Again, ask yourself, what's the line with which fairy tales, including the dark fairy tales of Benedick's mother, end? Then reread the book, as I did...if you dare!
Rating:
Summary: A gripping, almost mesmerising read
Review: This is an extraordinary novel--a gripping, mesmerising read that has the feel of a Grimm fairytale, rooted very firmly in the strangeness of human nature. Benedick Hunter first enters the 'dark wood' without warning, after a long calvary as a failure, as husband, father, actor..He is sure he can get out of it by embarking on strange travels with his young son, Cosmo, in the US. looking for lost family..He and Cosmo come to the haunted South..and it's then the wood gets darker still, the net tightens around him, the wicked witch is coming..
With all the pace of a thriller, and a great tenderness under the black comedy and Gothic foreboding, this gripping, unusual and lucid novel is very hard to put down. In fact, I couldn't! Highly recommended.
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