Darkness Visible: Introduced by Nicola Barker

A man disfigured as a boy in the fires of WWII London and a beautiful young woman represent polar opposites of the spiritual spectrum, the first a literal-minded social outcast who believes himself to be in communion with holy spirits and undergoes great sacrifice in order to do their bidding and the second a believer in chaotic chance who exploits herself and others in order to satisfy her need for autonomy. William Golding is on a serious mission here. He is concerned with questions of judgment, morality, community, and spirituality, but he denies the possibility of easy answers. The result is a dense novel, generally difficult, sometimes entertaining, written in prose that I found to be needlessly verbose. It is an interesting book, but I did not find the main characters to be convincing as individuals so much as vehicles for the author's explorations of the extremes of human nature. Some of the secondary characters, particularly the bookseller Sim Goodchild and the pedophile Mr. Pedigree, were more compelling. That they figure prominently in the conclusion is to the novel's credit.

I recently read "Lord of the Flies" and then happened upon this lesser-known book by William Golding. I am a slow reader, but I read this novel surprisingly quickly, and was drawn in and eventually absorbed by the characters, their inner dialogues and their private universes. Matty, the "Anti-Hero/Martyr", represents many things for me--a prophet in the wilderness, a shaman, a clown, whom I would not consider to be evil; he is not vengeful, violent, nor is he vindictive. And yet in his silence, he can be frightening; he commits "a grievous deed" for which he turns to the Bible, and then to spirits/spiritual guides, in a quest for redemption. There is a dreamy, surreal aspect to the prose, that occasionally left me confused as to the exact nature of whatever reality was being described at a particular moment; for example, near the end of the book--is Sophy (one of two "evil twins") actually brutalizing the young boy that has been kidnapped for her, or only suffering from criminal delusions of grandeur? Is she merely imagining this violence? I am impressed with the way Golding develops both the inner and outer lives of the two little girls (Sophy and Toni), who start out innocently enough as children. Sophy and Toni grow up in an emotional vacuum, nursing dangerous fantasies, as a result of their father's neglect. Nevertheless--in the end, both girls make their choices about the type of individuals they want to be. Certainly the traumatic childhoods of Sophy and Toni contribute to their respective downward spirals into delinquency. [And yet others, who in real life come from scarier circumstances than these two little girls, can go on to accomplishment, achievement and greatness in their adult lives.] Sophy and Toni are both very bright girls; at least metaphorically, the twins resemble Regan and Goneril from Shakespeare's "King Lear", minus Cordelia. Matty chooses his destiny as well; the difference being that I can sympathize with Matty, as he, and his life, has been so literally "scarred" from the beginning. Like Quasimodo, the archetypal "ugly monster" often has the biggest heart. Matty's deformity also makes him stronger than either Sophy or Toni; he is resiliently independent from a very young age. And as reclusive and mysterious as Matty is--I believe him to be compassionate. After reading this book, which contains some "Dickensian" aspects (particularly the character of Mr. Pedigree), in my understanding of the term--I can see why Golding became a Nobel laureate. Not only by means of his intellectual and creative gifts, but also via the empathy and understanding he shows for his characters. All of which Golding is able to elucidate in a prose that is often poetic, and explicit when necessary (surely this was much easier to do in 1979 when this book was published, then it would have been in 1954 when "Lord of the Fli...

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.