Dr James Darke has expelled himself from the world. He writes compulsively in his "coming-of-old-age" journal; he eats little, and drinks and smokes a lot. Meditating on what he has lost - the loves of his life, both dead and alive - he tries to console himself with the wisdom of the great thinkers and poets, yet finds nothing but disappointment. But cracks of light appear in his carefully managed darkness, and he begins to emerge from his self-imposed exile, drawn by the tender, bruised filaments of love for his daughter and grandson...
Mail on Sunday
Debut delight . . . Just how this gleefully conjured misanthrope came to wall himself off from the world is the mystery at the heart of a singular first novel that evolves into a moving meditation on loss and redemption
Colm Toibin
A supreme example of a natural and gifted storyteller
Sebastian Barry
A wondrous book with two fathers, Kingsley Amis and Dante
Spectator
Makes for dark, thrilling reading . . . In James Darke, Gekoski has created a powerful, raging voice
Economist
An original and bleakly funny portrait of grief
Guardian
Surprising . . . with a warmth that is genuinely and unexpectedly moving
Philip Pullman
I was beguiled and charmed by the vivid personality being revealed. By that, and by the fact that I couldn't stop reading. Gekoski puts words together with a sure touch and deep craftsmanship
The Times
Stuffed with more wisdom, bile, wit and tenderness than many writers create in a lifetime. In James Darke we have a hero as troubled and eternal as King Lear . . . And in Rick Gekoski we have a late-flowering genius of a novelist who proves it's never too late to start a glittering career in fiction
Sunday Telegraph
A very good storyteller
The Herald
Rick Gekoski's impressive debut novel . . . Darke is both a tender and hard-hitting examination of grief and the slow, singular healing process . . . A brilliantly vivid creation . . . life-affirming and life-shattering
The Scotsman - Stuart Kelly
An immensely enjoyable elegy . . . done with precision and patience
Books to Look Out For In 2017 Irish Times
A coming-of-old-age journal which is full of advice on how to live and how to die
JOHN NIVEN
Staggeringly accomplished. Heartbreakingly true. A shockingly monumental first novel
SEBASTIAN BARRY
A wondrous book with two fathers, Kingsley Amis and Dante
Library Journal
★ 10/15/2017
Entertainingly irascible and curmudgeonly, thin-skinned and misanthropic, Dr. James Darke lives alone after the death of his wife, feigning deafness to avoid conversing with the handyman, firing a cleaning lady who's become too bubbly, fuming with upper-crust British prejudices, and behaving badly toward the neighbors' barking dog. He was ever thus—as a schoolmaster, he got in trouble for keeping notes on his students' various defects as a way to remember their names—but now he's worse. He's even told George, the only person he could consider a friend, to collect his mail and then toss it, and he's not speaking to daughter Lucy, whom he nevertheless recalls tenderly throughout the narrative. He's also started keeping a coming-of-old-age journal, not an entirely bad idea. But when George shows up, pleading with him to respond to his daughter's increasingly distraught letters, Darke does something of a turnaround, getting past Lucy's initial anger and frustration to bond with his grandson. If that sounds sentimental, it isn't; this is a tough-minded and bracing novel about life's final moments from rare book dealer and academic Gekoski, writing his first novel, and it's a success. VERDICT A page-turning portrait of the most difficult character you'll be glad to claim as a friend.
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