Darkness Visible [Mass Market Paperback]

William Golding (Author)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Faber & Faber, Incorporated (1983)
• ASIN: B000U8Y1MA
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)

More About the Author

Born in Cornwall, England, William Golding started writing at the age of seven. Though he studied natural sciences at Oxford to please his parents, he also studied English and published his first book, a collection of poems, before finishing college. He served in the Royal Navy during World War II, participating in the Normandy invasion. Golding's other novels include Lord of the Flies, The Inheritors, The Free Fall, Pincher Martin, The Double Tongue, and Rites of Passage, which won the Booker Prize.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars More Than Just "Visible" Darkness, March 14, 2005

By 

Dominic (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Darkness Visible: A Novel (Paperback)

Best known for his how-to-survive-amongst-prim-and-proper-turned-savage-children-on-a-stranded-island guide, "Lord of the Flies", Golding published a much more sinister and perhaps even more relevant work in 1979, "Darkness Visible." Though groundbreaking in its own right, Lord of the Flies took a sense of content that could legitimately appeal to all audiences without any tongue-in-cheek aspect to it---this book, however, not only cross that line, but spits on it when it passes by.

The story revolves mainly around two people: a World War II damaged boy, Matty, and Sophy, a young girl whose twin suddenly disappears one day, leaving her to grow up on her own without the presence of the other half that had been such a force in her upbringing. Golding, after presenting the two characters and their backgrounds, weaves an intricate plot of terrorism, drugs, sexual depravity, violence, and spirituality using both of them together unwittingly in many of the same events that affect their lives.

Yes, as the other reviewers said and as the editors' reviews noted, this is definitely a weird book, so if you can't stomach it, don't buy the book.. What with the deviant tendencies (take your pick---an implied child molester, a drug dealer, a dominatrix, a chess master who seems to have a new wife/mother for his children daily) of the personalities of the people Golding forms, one can easily be tempted to laugh this one off as a wannabe shocker with no real substance---but it's not. I'd rank this up with the best of his works, hands down---there is intelligence, mellifluous imagery, cleverness, wit and humor galore, a sense of cynicism, but overall, incredible creativity and prose in Darkness Visible. It may be a difficult book to get through at times because of the way it is set up and the changes in its style at random, but if you're looking for something different that will challenge some of your thinking and implant in you a different perspective on a lot of things going on in our world, don't pass it up.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Inspirational study of human nature, June 23, 2009

By 

Victoria Williams "psigirl" (Beaverton, Oregon USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Darkness Visible: A Novel (Paperback)

I actually received this book in error (my error) but was drawn to the title and read it anyway. I was stunned at the grace and clarity in which it moved in view of the dense and thought provoking subject matter. It will rest on the top of my book shelf, along with the other life changing novels.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Freudian Analysis, October 10, 2005

By 

Ivan_Karamazov - See all my reviews

This review is from: Darkness Visible: A Novel (Paperback)

As with all great books, Darkness Visable is multifaceted and open to interpretation. However, if there is a central theme to this book that I can grasp, it is a sort of Freudian notion that trauma as children, and particularly rejection by parental figures, leads - in the case of Sophy and Matty - to profound and irreversable damage later in life.

Sophy's decent into depravity started not with drugs or sexual experimentation, but with rejection by her father. As Golding describes it, with obvious Freudian overtones, as a small girl she attempted to woo him, succeeding only once in getting him to take her for a walk. During this walk, the young girl wished her mother and sister would never return - even wished they would die - so she would not have to share her father ever again. Later, there is her subsequent curiousity about the "auntie's" bedroom, and what may have transpired there; and her terrible jealousy about her father's impending second marriage.

The frustrated craving for parental love is less obvious in Matty, but nevertheless present. Matty's craving for affection becomes fixated on the pederast Pedigree, a sort of unwitting reciprocity of the latter's perverted passions, which may have led Matty to murder his rival Henderson. A desire to redeem himself and win Pedigree's approval becomes the defining feature of the rest of Matty's life.

The final irony in the book is that Matty, who has absolutely nothing in life, nevertheless finds a sort of redemption in the end, in spite of his slide towards insanity and the occult. On the other hand, by the time the story ends it is obvious that Sophy, who to all outward appearances had every advantage in life, has become an irredemable sociopath. While wounds from war and fire can be mended, there are some less visable scars that never heal.