Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

Part of the ‘Into and out of Africa’ reading journey

The story opens on board a yacht moored in the Thames but due to set sail for parts unknown; the men aboard are drinking and swapping yarns as they wait listlessly for the tide to turn. The setting sun provides a brooding backdrop and leads one of the men, Marlow, to declare “this also has been one of the dark places of the earth” and launch into a tale.

He’s speculating how the first Roman invaders must have felt sailing up the river into the unfamiliar British terrain in an inhospitable climate populated by savage natives; an interesting parallel to his own experience captaining a river steamboat up the Congo to ‘relieve’ the resident of a remote ivory trading post.

The man at the centre of the mission is the charismatic Mr Kurtz whose trading prowess is second to none due in part to a skill in oratory that gives him a Messianic quality that spellbinds colleagues and natives alike. In fact the natives are so devoted they don’t want him to leave.

Marlow’s engagement, induction and voyage up river is recounted; with hard-nosed detachment as far the physical dangers are concerned, but with more circumspection as regards the psychological pressures that emanate from the jungle beyond the riverbank – the continent’s heart of darkness. He can begin to understand how a white man may succumb to “the fascination of the abomination” that can be found there and be prey to “the growing regret, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate”.

The immensely powerful language (quoted to do it justice) gives the novella the feel of a horror story; as it is – but there’s nothing supernatural here, it is all horribly, if unfamiliarly natural in the time and place that was Equatorial Africa in the time of colonisation. And Conrad should know, he did the steamboat job himself and, as a result, this anguished take on colonisation provides an interesting contrast to Rider Haggard’s bravado. (See previous review of King Soloman’s Mines).

Derby Day - D J Taylor

Read as part T of the “Along the Library Shelf” reading journey

Chosen because

It seemed to promise a classic Victorian mystery with a cast drawn from the various layers of society, maybe in the vein of Wilkie Collins with a dash of Dickens.

The Review

The classic Derby horse race attracts the interest of all classes in Victorian England from the gentlemen owners, through the working poor who like a spectacle, to the disreputable bookies and petty criminals who grub around anywhere that money changes hands.

Representatives of these social strata permeate the book as they orbit, at various distances, one of the big race favourites – Tiberius. Most of these characters seem fairly stock - the widowed owner with an impoverished estate, troubled daughter and a new young governess; the scheming ‘gentleman’ of modest means but high ambitions to marry money and own the Derby winner, with a shady sidekick in tow to do the dirty work; the lady he has targeted but whose own scheming is a match for most; and a master safe-cracker who has a no-nonsense police detective on his trail – but they are all well developed into individuals with stories to tell.

Over the months leading up to the race the plot develops and thickens slowly like a pot of stew on a Victorian range as the diverse ingredients are stirred and mixed to deliver up a tasty concoction. As Derby day at approaches events accelerate and all head to Epsom with more to resolve than whether Tiberius wins the race.

The measured, laconic style with the odd wink to the reader worked very well for developing the characters and building the plot but was less effective in describing the climactic events of the race day itself. A minor issue though in an enjoyable read.

Read another?

Maybe give “Kept” – another Victorian mystery - a go.

Brooklyn – Colm Toibin

The book follows Eilis Lacey, a young girl on the verge of womanhood but with limited prospects in 1950s rural Ireland. She’s studying bookkeeping but despite being ‘good with numbers’ can only get a Sunday job serving in a local grocery.

Her elder sister has contacts at the golf club and soon it is arranged, almost without Eilis’s involvement, that she will go to the land of opportunity, America - specifically Brooklyn - where there is an established Irish community and an ex-pat priest who can smooth her path to employment and lodgings.

The experiences of the voyage to New York and of immigrant life in the cultural melting pot of Brooklyn are the meat of the central section of the work (interesting but not, to me, riveting). Ironically as the homesickness is overcome and she begins to carve out her new life she is called back to Ireland; older, more experienced and suddenly with a choice of prospects, she faces the dilemma of whether to stay put or return to what she has left behind in Brooklyn.

In my ignorance I assumed Colm Toibin was a woman such was the intense focus on Eilis and her life, with only the photo inside the back cover putting me right. Maybe my own gender contributed to a lack of empathy for Eilis for most of the book. She is a bit of a mouse, generally following the line of least resistance; but at the end as the pressure (not quite excitement – Eilis does not do excitement) builds the question is will she finally decide for herself what we wants for her future?

The writing is understated, in line with Elis’s character, but subtly builds up layers of feeing and experience that shape and influence an ordinary life. It clearly impressed the critics, leading to the Man Booker long list and a Costa award, but it won’t make it onto my ‘books of the year’ list.

The Lewis Man – Peter May

In this second book of the Lewis trilogy, now ex-DI Fin Macleod is drawn back to the Hebrides where he plans to restore his parent’s crofthouse back to habitable state. This means he is on hand when an annual peat cutting ceremony unearths a potentially ancient ‘bog body’. These occasionally emerge, well preserved by the acidic peat moss, and this one is immediately dubbed ‘Lewis Man’.

The title is short-lived as the autopsy reveals that the deceased young man not only suffered a violent death but also sported an Elvis tattoo; so it’s a potential murder from half a century ago. DNA also points to a connection to Fin’s family, but the old man who may know the answers is suffering from dementia and can’t help.

The author repeats his trick from ‘The Blackhouse’ of having a back story related in parallel to Fin’s efforts to solve the riddle, this time using the dementia sufferer to relate to the reader historic events that he can only communicate to Fin in tantalising snippets.

Fin’s own personal story also moves forward, unobtrusively, as he warily picks up the pieces of his Island life after the revelations in the previous book.

This book is every bit as atmospheric as the first and again reveals to a wider audience an unusual Island tradition, central to the story; this one quite shameful (but thankfully no longer current).

The action builds to a powerful climax and leaves the reader both satisfied and eager to move on to the concluding volume ‘The Chessmen’.