Customer Reviews

Boy in Darkness (Literature for life series)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This novelette could fit somewhere in the middle of Peake's _Gormenghast_. Titus Groan, on his 14th birthday, tired of ritual and "the eternal deadly round of symbolism", leaves home. He is captured by two semi-human creatures Hyena and Goat. These creatures will take Titus to their Emperor the Lamb, who sits alone in what can only be described as Hell. C. S. Lewis wrote to Peake admiring Gormenghast. Lewis said of Peake that he was a true maker of myths. Lewis spoke with authority, having written the great myth of the world of Narnia and having friends such as Charles Williams and Tolkien. The Peake myth, however, is hellish and dark. You'll be interested in how Peake the artist-illustrator draws images in words. You'll be faced with Peake's grave view of religion and symbolism gone wrong. If your only exposure to Mervyn Peake is the BBC production of Gormenghast, Boy in Darkness may give you a deeper perspective of the brilliant fantasy of horror that Peake was capable of writing. I gave Boy in Darkness four stars instead of five only because the end of the story seemed rushed and somewhat unfinished. But then, nightmares often end that way.

I read this story in a compilation entitled sometime, never. I had been daunted by the length of the Gormenghast trilogy, so when I found this I siezed it to indulge my curiosity in the much-lauded Mr. Peake. I was not dissapointed. This is my favorite shorter-form fantasy story of all time, and I've put in a decent ammount of investigation into the genre. Highly recommended.

For a while, now, I have resisted reading the work of Mervyn Peake. My brief prior exposure to his famous *Gormenghast* trilogy gave me the sense that his work was more grotesque than weird, and that it would require more than an opium-tinged Dickensian nightmare with Gothic overtones to hold my interest.

I had mentioned my views (or prejudice, if you prefer) regarding Peake during an online discussion at a Clark Ashton Smith forum, and one of the forum members recommended that I start with *Boy in Darkness*. A few years passed before I was able to take his advice, but I recently read *Boy in Darkness*, and my prejudice regarding Peake has vanished.

*Boy in Darkness* describes the boy Titus's escape from one living nightmare, his absurdly ritualized existence at the family castle, into a nightmare of another order. Impelled by a pack of silent, ominous hounds, Titus crosses a river into an even stranger realm, a depopulated land of strange animal-human hybrids, only two of which remain. The two surviving creatures, a darkly sly and sycophantic Goat and a brutish, bone-crunching Hyena, compete for the favor of a Dr. Moreau-like figure, the Lamb, who rules the land with a demiurge's omnipotence. The Lamb has plans for Titus, as well....

Thomas Ligotti once wrote of H.P. Lovecraft that what he most admired about Lovecraft was his creation of fiction that portrays the world as an "enchanting nightmare". In that sense, and contrary to the assertion of another reviewer, Peake and Lovecraft have much in common.

Peake's evocative, complex, and rich descriptive language creates a horrific yet marvellous atmosphere, one that simultaneously repels and attracts. The creation of such atmospheres is obviously Peake's aim, and not the delineation of detailed characters and the weaving of intricate plotlines. It seems to me that one ought to critique an author by how well he succeeds in realizing his apparant intentions, and not by how completely he panders to the reviewer's preconceptions and narrow-minded expectations. By the criteria I propose, Peake thoroughly succeeds in his aim. That said, I do agree with those who feel that the ending is somewhat rushed, but that flaw, to me, is a minor one when compared to the tremendous power that the book as a whole conveys.

In conclusion, if you are any of the following, then you should avoid this book:

--A person who rushes to judgment because the author misuses a word (which could well have been the fault of the editors or the proofreaders, by the way; have such textual nitpickers actually examined Peake's original manuscript, one wonders?);

--A dullard who, failing to understand that the essence of the finest horror is its *power of suggestion*, requires that every detail be made expilcit, and that every loose end be neatly tied;

--A person who makes unfounded (to the point of idiocy) judgmental remarks, such as the author "was mentally disturbed";

--A person who expects a *Great Expectations*-level of intricacy of plotting and characterization in a 114-page book.

Those, on the other hand, who appreciate elegant, poetic, descriptive writing, and dark atmospheres, will relish the book, as I have. Highly recommended.

I never gave this book to my children until they were adults. I would not even have read it to them when they were small. Boy in Darkness can be legitimately slated from all sorts of literary viewpoints -- the story-line is rather meandering, we could have done with some more indication of how the empire of the mines went into decline and of where the Lamb came from in the first place, the writing would have benefited from revision here and there and so forth. But gripping -- yes, and some! This is a raw nightmare, and maybe all the more effective for lack of finish in the craftsmanship. What it suggested to me was a perverted version of The Island of Dr Moreau, but I have no idea whether there was any direct influence or whether the resemblance is coincidental. The author was, to put it mildly, talented but mentally disturbed. The central character is obviously Prince Titus, but otherwise I find Boy in Darkness quite unlike the Gormenghast trilogy. I looked dutifully for symbolism and whatnot, but I soon gave up on that. Any hidden meanings are best left vague and undefined. The other three personae, or at least two of them, are probably based on people Peake knew, but the Lamb -- a woolly toy gone so horribly wrong that I nearly locked away the children's teddybears when I first read the book. It's not like Stephen King, it's not like Lovecraft (who I just love but who surely never frightened anyone). It's not like anything I know, even my own nightmares.

It's not difficult to get the measure of this book. It was perfectly clear within the first five sentences.

Here is the third sentence: "Ritual, like a senseless chariot, had rolled its wheels -- and the natural life of the day had been bruised and crushed." This was not promising.

Here is how the fourth sentence begins: "Lord of a tower'd tract, he had no option but to..." And yes, I have spelled "tower'd" just the way the book gives it.

Though these sentences were enough to give me pause, they didn't actually stop me. THAT dubious honor belongs to the FIFTH sentence: "To lead him hither to thither through the mazes of his adumbrate home." "Adumbrate", it turns out, is incorrectly used (it is a verb, not an adjective). I know this because I was forced to stop dead in my tracks and haul out a dictionary and look it up, the first time in the whole of the rolling year in which I have been forced to do so. (When a literate and educated adult is forced to look up a word in a children's book, it does not speak well of the author!) In short, we are dealing with a graduate summa cum laude of the Bulwer-Lytton school of children's literature. Sigh.

Oh, well, I DID pay for the privilege of reading it, and it IS only 154 pages -- in large type, with illustrations. How bad could it be?

Well, the people in the story have about as much character as your average everyday piece of cardboard; there is no real plot to speak of; the illustrations are unattractive; and the ending is far too abrupt, and utterly unsatisfying.

This is not to say there is nothing positive about this book. The setting is magnificently described, and though the Lamb has no character, he DOES have a personality -- a hellish, Satanic personality which is skillfully revealed.

I do wonder about the Lamb. Lambs are traditionally symbols of Christ; meeting one which is unquestionably and unmistakably Satanic makes it all the more breathtakingly bone-chilling. The ghastly deformation of the Titus' limbs during the final battle is particularly horrifying; I wonder if this might have been C. S. Lewis' inspiration for the "Luxuria" incident in his "The Pilgrim's Regress"???

But I think the biggest problem with this book is that, though there are images and incidents enough to populate your darkest nightmares, yet it leaves the reader with ten thousand million questions unanswered. Who was the Lamb, and what was his Kingdom? How did he come to rule, how did he become so depraved, and where did he get his power to "remake" people? What were the Dogs who ferried Titus across the river to the Desert, and why did they do so? (Even more interestingly, what motivates them to ferry him back afterwards!?) Who is the Man with the Sloping Back who had been the Hyena, and the Man with the Sidelong Shuffle who had been the Goat? And where do they GO??? They both leave without once saying even so much as "Thank you for rescuing us", for God's sake!

All in all, a book that just leaves one shaking one's head at the contradictions of it all. :(

Boy in Darkness was not challenging at all. After you met all of the characters it was touch and go with no real plot. The characters (even the hero) had no depth to them and were plain and shallow. The physical descriptions were stunning and is a good idea for a plot but is not fully developed. I would not give it higher than two stars.