0
Cancel

    Darke

    4.0 1

    by Rick Gekoski

    View All Available Formats & Editions >

    Hardcover

    (Main)

    $25.00
    $25.00

    Temporarily Out of Stock Online

    Customer Reviews

    • ISBN-13: 9781786892287
    • Publisher: Canongate Books
    • Publication date: 11/21/2017
    • Edition description: Main
    • Pages: 320
    • Product dimensions: 5.80(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.20(d)

    Rick Gekoski is a writer, rare-book dealer and academic. He has written several widely praised non-fiction books including Staying Up , Tolkien's Gown , Outside of a Dog and Lost, Stolen or Shredded . This is his first novel.

    In 2005 he was one of the judges for the Man Booker Prize, and was then Chair of the judges for the Man Booker International Prize 2011. He teaches creative non-fiction for the Arvon Foundation, and sits on their Development Board. In 2010 he was elected a Trustee of English PEN.

    Eligible for FREE SHIPPING details

    .

    A daringly entertaining debut novel by a seventy-two year old about the nature of a good life and a good death

    Recently Viewed 

    • Darke
      Darke
      Average rating: 4.0 Average rating:

    Related Subjects

    Fiction
    Fiction Subjects
    Literary Styles & Movements - Fiction
    Fiction - Other
    Fiction
    Fiction Subjects
    Literary Styles & Movements - Fiction
    Fiction - Other
    Sunday Telegraph
    A very good storyteller
    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.
    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
    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
    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

    Read More

    Sign In Create an Account
    Search Engine Error - Endeca File Not Found