Candlemoth
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Roger John Ellory's Candlemoth makes a decent but not entirely successful stab at being several novels. It is a protest against the death penalty and about inhuman treatment of prisoners that dramatises both issues by showing us Daniel, who has been railroaded to the electric chair over the brutal murder of his best friend. Inevitably though, Daniel is so passive and battered by his situation that the book can show us little except his pain. Offstage, it is a thriller about the process whereby he was framed and might be acquitted, but Ellory de-emphasises this aspect of the plot in favour of Daniel's suffering.
Much of the book is taken up in a memoir of the 60s, when Daniel and his best friend Nathan had a relationship that crossed racial boundaries in a south torn by conflict and when they went on the run to avoid being drafted into an unjust war. The book is vivid in its sense of the time, but again there is a sense of Daniel as someone who never really lives his own life--even in love and friendship he is the person to whom emotions and events happen. --Roz Kaveney --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description
Daniel and Nathan were six years old when they first met and became best friends. Thirty years later Dan is convicted of Nathan's murder . . .
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First Sentence
Four times I've been betrayed - twice by women, once by a better friend than any man might wish for, and lastly by a nation. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Four times I've been betrayed - twice by women, once by a better friend than any man might wish for, and lastly by a nation. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Dead Man Talking,
By
This review is from: Candlemoth (Paperback)
Roger Jon Ellory made his big breakthrough in 2007 with A Quiet Belief in Angels which has gone on to become one of the best-selling books in the nation. There's a lot more to this Brummie lad than just that one novel though, and most people going through his back-catalogue as a response to his blockbuster success are finding that his outstanding writing skills are evident here in his debut, which again spans most of the lifetime of a single man in the south-eastern USA through the 1950s, 1960s and beyond. It is altogether different in its style, however, and in the emotions it engenders in its readers.
Most stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. This one is a curiosity because in effect the reader knows the end before opening the first page; 36-year-old Daniel Ford is on death row in a South Carolina prison, having been tried and found guilty of the murder of his best friend some twelve years earlier. For most of the tale, then, the key questions are how, where, and above all why did he kill Nathan Verney? A singular oddity for me was that the story is told from a first-person perspective, making me constantly wonder how a dead man could be recounting the events of his life between 1952 - when at 6 years old he met Nathan - and 1982, with just a few hours to go before going to the electric chair. It turns out that although the end appears to be almost a foregone conclusion, the telling of that end is vivid, powerful and consummately makes up for the relatively genteel nature of most that had gone before, prior to Daniel's arrest around Christmas of 1969. Ellory succeeds in making you feel what it must be like to be weeks, days and finally just hours away from death. While some of the political backdrops are too long drawn out in detail, there is no question that politics and racial prejudice lie right at the heart of the tale. Most relevant of all is the Vietnam conflict, and how Daniel and Nathan face up to the probability of being drafted into a war they both have no desire to be involved in. The other key issue is that Nathan is black, and in a part of the country with strong associations with the Ku Klux Klan, he faces harmful consequences when he simply goes out to a bar with his white friend, and takes even higher risks by having a white girlfriend - especially one with a father reputed to be a Klan king-pin. Yet another political topic central to all that goes on is the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy, and when all is said and done at the conclusion, it becomes apparent that all of the main characters, including Daniel's girlfriends, and most if not all of the political narrative are absolutely relevant to the story as a whole, even if some of the people and background events seem to have no bearing at the time of their mention. The prose will be regarded as merely average by anyone who has read Ellory's most recent work, but the imagery of both the tranquillity of Greenleaf South Carolina, and the intimidating inmates and warders on death row make for gripping reading. There are, throughout this tale, emotive portrayals of love, lust, envy, betrayal, guilt, fear, joy, anger and utter hopelessness. For those familiar with Ellory's other novels this one does take a while before it really takes hold, and patience might be needed at times, but the pay-off is absolute and uncompromising, with an ending that few others can hope to match. Ultimately an intense, moving and memorable story.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An amazing book,
By
This review is from: Candlemoth (Paperback)
I don't normally write reviews but I wrote one for A Quiet Belief in Angels (the first book of RJ Ellory's that I read) because I loved it so much. Absolutely the great American novel. But then I read Candlemoth which is his first novel and it is equally as good if not better. The friendship between Daniel & Nathan is extraordinary and consumes the reader. I love Ellory's anti death penalty stance and the descriptions of the terrible conditions on death row. I cried I got angry and then I cried some more and the ending is positively nail biting. R J Ellory is a great great writer and I will not stop until I have read all his books. Can't wait for his next book to come out.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
.,
By GLJones (Wales) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Candlemoth (Paperback)
Buy Candlemoth if you enjoy books with powerful and emotive first person narrative and want a protagonist to really care about. R J Ellory's narrator, Daniel Ford, is well drawn, emotionally mature, and very convincing. Candlemoth is a gripping story of growing up, friendship, loss and brutal injustice; all set to an informative (and yet not overbearing) backdrop of America's own internal struggles.
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