What They Do in the Dark: A Novel [Hardcover]

Amanda Coe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 19, 2012

An unforgettable debut about the pain, joy, and occasional beauty of childhood and its nearly unspeakable dangers.

Like Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin and Donna Tartt’s The Little Friend, this gripping novel pulls you toward its unimaginable climax and will leave you haunted and heartbroken.

Spoiled but emotionally neglected Gemma, who seems to have everything, and semi-feral Pauline, who has less than nothing, are two very different ten-year-old girls growing up in a tough Yorkshire town in the 1970s. Pauline longs for the simple luxuries of Gemma’s life: her neatly folded socks and her clean hair. Gemma, upset by her parent’s breakup, loses herself in fantasies of meeting the child television star Lallie. When Lallie shoots a movie in their hometown, Gemma and Pauline grab the chance for their wildest dreams to come true. But the film becomes a terrible catalyst for the larger forces acting on the two girls, a dysfunctional adult world that trickles down to the children; and playground bullying escalates, with dreadful consequences.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“This arresting and disturbing debut novel focuses on two 10-year-old girls in a gritty 1970s Yorkshire town... Coe has many credits as a screenwriter, so the tight structure and exquisite tension-building throughout might be expected, but her pitch-perfect, unsentimental evocation of the pleasures, confusions, yearnings, and vulnerabilities of girls is what makes this a stunningly accomplished novel.” (The Atlantic )

“One of the most compelling novels published this year... Its savage wit and transporting eye for detail are the things that keep you along for the ride.” (The Times (UK) )

“[An] impressive debut… A dark, disturbing look at a 1970s childhood, as a tetchy relationship between two schoolgirls culminates 
in a truly shocking ending.” (Marie Claire UK )

“This darkly funny, sordid, brutally honest concoction comes to a conclusion that nobody could predict, yet it could not have ended any other way, given what happens to Gemma and Pauline as their lives intertwine in a downward spiral toward disaster.” (Shelf Awareness )

“...Coe plots these ruined childhoods in a convincing fashion, including everything from drugs to divorce to molestation, without a heavy hand. She has an adept eye for psychological progression...” (Publishers Weekly )

“One of the most masterly, disturbing pieces of fiction I have read in a long while... will leave you haunted long after you've read the final page.” (Sunday Times (UK) )

“Despite the undercurrents of violence and sex, this is really a story about character: how childhood innocence is lost, cynicism gained, morality discovered and then, perhaps, lost again… a terrific debut, full of energy and color; as propulsive as a thriller.” (The Guardian (UK) )

“...superbly plotted, building, from seemingly disparate elements, with a dread inevitability to a tense and shocking finale.” (The Daily Mail (UK) )

“A brilliant novel… The first half of the book is pure delight… But in the second half, you gradually realize this is not a gentle comedy at all. Indeed, the last 20 pages are among the most horrifying I have ever read.” (A. N. Wilson - Reader's Digest UK )

About the Author

Amanda Coe is a writer and screenwriter whose television credits include the British series Shameless. She lives in London.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (March 19, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393081389
• ISBN-13: 978-0393081381
• Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 0.6 x 9.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #240,816 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Shocking but brilliant July 26, 2011

By Keris Nine TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Kindle Edition

Up until close to the end of the book, it's very hard to pin down what Amanda Coe's novel is about. You can look for a structure, for themes and threads that work throughout the book, but it's hard to see any kind of conventional plot storyline or theme tying them together. What is clear however, by the fact that you are held completely within its grasp throughout, is that the book is exceptionally well-written, evoking a sense of period of the 70s from the perspective of two young Yorkshire girls. What is almost impossible to describe however is the shock ending which seems to come out of the blue, but it's only then that the careful orchestrating of events that has led up to it becomes clear.

The book lulls you into a false sense of security, seeming to be a straightforward nostalgic account of life in Yorkshire in 1975, seen from the perspective of two ten year-old girls from very different social backgrounds. Gemma is from a well-off family goes on foreign holidays with her parents and buys all the sweets and comics she likes. Pauline however, who is from a rough part of town, her mother a prostitute and mostly absent, is the smelly girl in the class, wild, dangerous and shunned by the others. Even though it becomes clear that Gemma's life isn't as perfect as it seems, the novel is about more than a comparative look at social differences in pre-Thatcherite Britain. We get other perspectives on women's lives from a variety of ages, classes and temperaments - from Lollie Paluza, a 10 year-old TV-star prodigy adored by Gemma, from Vera, a middle-aged actress working on a film with Lollie, and from Quentin, an American producer also involved in the film.

Coe's writing is simply brilliant, setting the tone perfectly, getting into the mindset of a number of very different women, and expressing their outlook in a realistic and sometimes frank and disturbing manner. The precision with which she gets into the minds of the characters is matched by the accuracy of observation of their reactions to one another. This is taken to a length that is really quite surprising and utterly shocking, the theme gradually arising that there is a seed of bitterness (or even goodness) within one that can be turned towards evil with surprising ease, particularly in application towards women (and the emergence of Margaret Thatcher around this time may indeed also have relevance in this respect). It's a testament to the power of the writing then that this draws you in, even when it isn't clear where the novel is going, only for it to have even more of an impact when the conclusion arrives. It's a conclusion that is indescribably painful to read - be warned - and it is likely to remain with you for a long time.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Brutally and bravely realistic September 17, 2011

By Steve Benner VINE™ VOICE

Format:Kindle Edition

I wonder if one needs to have grown up in or around Doncaster in the 1960s or '70s to really appreciate just how terrifyingly realistic Amanda Coe's "What They Do In The Dark" actually is? Most probably not, because almost any predominantly working class area of the UK could provide the social mix and dysfunctional family settings which give rise to the horrific events portrayed in this book. Having spent my school years in that particular South Yorkshire town, though, I found her use of identifiably real places in it and her spot-on descriptions of many of characters from the class-rooms and housing estates of my childhood, often had me breaking out in a cold sweat. So eerily evocative of those times is her writing, I kept feeling I was back there; I had forgotten how bad a lot of it was.

Beautifully written, despite its often brutal and bleak subject matter, "What They Do In The Dark" is often a very gripping read. The book's well-handled multi-person perspective provides an excellent cross-section through the worlds and viewpoints of the main characters and provides crystal-clear insights into the almost casual causes of the most horrendous of events. If I have one complaint, it is that things are just a little overdone when it comes to the addition of an American character into the mix, complete with a predictably full complement of neuroses and prejudices of an altogether alien kind, which kicks the narrative needlessly off-kilter for a chapter or so. That lapse (and a persistently jarring usage of the word "nesh") aside, however, Amanda Coe has done a superb job here of bringing her established screen-writing expertise to bear, weaving her loosely interconnected threads into a devastatingly vivid portrayal of innocence turned sour.

This is a book that pushes its readers well out of all comfort zones; it is harsh, brutal, oppressive, dark, dirty and, at times, altogether sordid. And yet it has a lot to say about the dangers of a society driven by inappropriate value sets, that turns a blind or indifferent eye to its less savoury failings and which essentially operates through illusory and fanciful views of itself, all too often fuelled by TV and the popular media. It takes a brave reader to make it to the end of this book; I doubt that anyone can get far into it and remain unaltered and unaffected by its contents, whether or not they spot where it is heading. It is a book that should be read and thought about, for all that; sometimes the dark needs to be faced.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Horrific Tale of Childhood Run Amok March 20, 2012

By Bonnie Brody TOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

What They Do in the Dark: A Novel by Amanda Coe is a very edgy thriller told in three distinct voices. One voice is that of Pauline Bright, a poverty-stricken girl of about 11 from a dysfunctional family where she gets beaten up or gets the silent treatment from her mother - when mom's at home. Most of the time she is in Leeds quite likely hooking. Pauline goes hungry, rarely has her hair brushed and stinks so badly that some of the other girls breathe through their mouths instead of their noses when she's around in order to avoid inhaling the stench. Her life is pure survival and she does what it takes to make it through the day - shoplifting, cutting school, beating up other kids, and bad mouthing adults. Her family is notorious in the town she lives in as almost all of them are criminals.

Gemma is about Pauline's age and comes from a middle class family. She has all the material things that Pauline lacks but she is very unhappy. Her parents have just split up and her mother has moved in with her new boyfriend. Gemma's favorite part of each day is watching a television show starring Lallie, a girl who is a great mimic and does song and dance routines. Gemma likes to pretend that she is Lallie and that she is living Lallie's life. Pauline tries to be Gemma's friend but most of the time she is unsuccessful unless Gemma wants something from her.

Quentin is a producer sent to England from Los Angeles to see if Lallie will make it as the star of an upcoming movie about a princess. Quentin is more interested in scoring drugs and getting sex than she is in the movie business but she leads Lallie and her mother along.

The scenes from the playground and the school are horrific and if you are a reader that does not like violence, racial slurs, or cursing, you might want to rethink reading this novel. These themes are not vicarious - they belong in the book, but the book is very heavy and difficult to get your head around at times. The abject poverty and dysfunctionality of Pauline's home and her subsequent behaviors are mind-boggling. Gemma's rage at her family situation starts to grow out of bounds and she becomes almost as heavy-handed as Pauline. The book culminates with an act of violence that is horrifying.

Amanda Coe has a way with words and most times she uses them brilliantly. I felt that the sections dealing with Quentin and the movie-making business were not up to par with the sections on Gemma and Pauline and they tended to go on too long. Otherwise, I would have rated this book a five.