Darkling (Paperback)
  • Darkling (Paperback)
zoom

Darkling (Paperback)

(author)
£15.99
Paperback 400 Pages
Published: 21/05/2015
Notify me when available

Stay one step ahead and let us notify you when this item is next available to order.

Mia Morgan, in the middle of her life, is a woman under siege: by memories of her late lover, by the relationship with her blind father, and by a family secret she can’t forget. She is also accused of living in the past: her days are spent amid the life and letters of Lady Brilliana Harley, who lived nearly four hundred years ago during the English Civil War.

Brilliana Harley is a Puritan, a lone Roundhead in a county of Royalists, and it is not long before her enemies sit down in siege around her. As cannon-shot rains down upon her castle, she alone must captain a garrison of men and defend her home.

Out of Brilliana’s words emerges a woman of courage and conviction, a loving mother and capable wife, dutiful even under duress. As Mia pieces her together, she finds that it is through Brilliana’s life, so different and yet so similar, that she can come to understand her own.

Darkling is a revolutionary undertaking: an echoing of two lives across the centuries, deftly weaving original seventeenth-century documents into the fabric of a modern fiction. The result is a book of voices, past and present, exquisitely observed and skilfully summoned.

Publisher: Vintage Publishing
ISBN: 9780099584148
Number of pages: 400
Weight: 277 g
Dimensions: 198 x 129 x 24 mm


MEDIA REVIEWS

A novel of masterly understatement... Laura Beatty uses [landscape] with subtle obliquity as a grid for mapping the emotional lives of her twin heroines, women divided by nearly four centuries. - Jonathan Keates, Spectator

From the virtuoso opening chapter, Beatty takes an offbeat, impressionistic approach... She is interested in the darkness of history, belief and the motivations of the heart: in how "places make people". Beatty's prose swoops and soars; she is particularly good on animals and birds, but can also turn her nature writer's intense gaze on the behaviour of humans. - Justine Jordan, Guardian

The lives of two women, centuries apart are curiously entwined. Beatty makes you feel the layers of history existing alongside the present, so that the stories blend seamlessly... Beautifully written... - The Times

Binding together the lives of two different yet strangely similar women, Beatty weaves a ruminative and richly rewarding narrative - Hephzibah Anderson, Daily Mail

A well-researched novel, bringing exciting historical events into an engaging and easily absorbed format. By merit of her excellent writing, Beatty has avoided the usual pitfalls of historical novels by giving it a modern twist, moving effortlessly between the past and present. I glimpsed what life might have been like in England nearly four hundred years ago... Prepare to be reeled in hook, line and sinker with Darkling – it won’t disappoint! - Culturefly

You may also be interested in...

Butter
Added to basket
Paperback
£14.99
How To Solve Your Own Murder
Added to basket
Orbital
Added to basket
Paperback
£9.99
Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop
Added to basket
The Christmas Tree Farm
Added to basket
Paperback
£9.99 £8.49
Kala
Added to basket
Paperback
£9.99 £8.49
The Last Devil To Die
Added to basket
Paperback
£9.99 £7.99
The Housemaid
Added to basket
Paperback
£9.99 £7.99
The Pumpkin Spice Cafe
Added to basket
Paperback
£9.99 £8.49
The Bee Sting
Added to basket
Paperback
£9.99 £8.49
Killing Time
Added to basket
Hardback
£10.00
The Cinnamon Bun Book Store
Added to basket
The Party
Added to basket
Hardback
£12.99 £10.99
The Vegetarian
Added to basket
Paperback
£9.99
You Are Here
Added to basket
Hardback
£20.00 £16.99
Small Things Like These
Added to basket
Paperback
£9.99 £8.49

Please sign in to write a review

Your review has been submitted successfully.