Darkmans for Dark Times
Categories: Staff Picks , Fiction
Nicola Barker’s extraordinary novel, Darkmans, published in 2007 and short listed for the Man Booker Prize, didn’t reach my desk until January of this year. So it’s still “new fiction” to me. I’ve been thinking about Darkmans for a while now since finishing it. There's a lot to consider.
Barker sets her wildly strange book in Ashford in Kent, the western terminus of the Channel Tunnel. Ashford is a town whose medieval heart is circumscribed by modernity. In Barker’s novel, it’s a place where the past seeps into the present, with characters influenced by the malevolent spirit of one John Scrogin, a jester at the court of Edward IV. Scrogin’s infamous act (can’t really call it a prank) was luring beggars to a barn then torching it.
A trio of families provide the principal characters. Beede is an Ashford native in his 60s, a community activist whose spirit was broken by a failure to save historic objects from destruction during Chunnel construction. Beede holds an interesting theory about how forward leaps in the evolution of the English language triggered the Renaissance in Britain. But a peculiar revenge scheme lands Beede heavily in debt, after he hires an art forger to reproduce random objects–but each with a tiny flaw–belonging to a man he despises.
Bede’s son, Kane, traffics in prescription drugs. Kane and Beede occupy the same house, but are purposefully remote, due to the painful demise of Kane’s mother, whom Beede divorced. Kane spends time sleuthing Beede’s conspiracy and pondering the origins in Middle English of words—words he doesn’t actually use—that pop into his head.
Dory and Elen are married and have a son, Fleet. Dory believes he’s German (but isn’t) and suffers a mental disorder, perhaps narcolepsy. During episodes, Dory seems directly inhabited by John Scrogin, so he’s liable to steal a horse or roll in the mud by the seaside, or commit any manner of outrage. (Watch for a malicious raven hanging around on these occasions—it’s likely to attack.)
Elen is a podiatrist who treats Beede’s feet (which seem to be bending) and those of Kane, as well. Her motives as seductress are mysterious. Little Fleet constructs a scale model of the Cathedral of Saint-Cecile out of matchsticks. Fleet can recount incidents from Scrogin’s life in impossible detail. And when Dory's having an episode, Fleet perceives him as “John.” To determine paternity, Dory has Fleet’s DNA tested. The lab determines Fleet’s DNA relates to a very distant ancestor of Dory.
The third family is the Broads, a brood of generational criminals and scofflaws represented by blonde, teenaged Kelly. She's Kane’s hilariously and breathtakingly coarse ex-girlfriend. Funny thing happens to Kelly after she breaks her leg climbing a wall at Kane’s house: she becomes avidly religious and reads signs from God in everything.
Gaffar, a Kurdish refugee who rescues the injured Kelly and becomes Kane’s drug currier, seems to see the weird behavior of the other characters for what it is. Is Gaffar jester-proof? Well, he's besotted with Kelly and possess a deadly fear of lettuce—you be the judge.
Barker’s characters are altered in maddening and tantalizing ways, but not to serve a plot in the ordinary sense. While entertaining and sometimes vigorously comic, Darkmans is not a read to satisfy those having expectations of narrative resolution.
In the book's final section, Kane demands the truth from Beede's art forger. She scoffs, “Truth is just a series of ideas that briefly congeal and then slowly fall apart again…a structure which we employ—in very small doses—to render life bearable.” She goes on to disparage the “absurd” idea (which is something like Beede’s theory) “that language has gaps in it and that lives can somehow just tumble through….” That’s one of the big ideas underlying Darkmans. And it’s a really good, big idea.
But I’m still thinking about it.
