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24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
In the Dark, 27 April 2008
Deborah Moggach is one of those well-selling female authors who's sometimes looked down on for not being literary. Like Joanna Trollope or Anita Shreve, say her detractors, she's a popular - populist - author churning out domestic sagas on a conveyor belt.
This simplification does these successful authors a disservice. They may deal with the everyday and their prose may indeed be accessible and non literary, but that doesn't mean their work should be undervalued. Any author that can bring reading to the masses deserves praise, and, as with Richard and Judy's recommended titles, sometimes first impressions are just plain biased.
In The Dark is a frisky love story set during WW1. Attractive Eithne Clay has a variety of lodgers in her large dilapidated London home. Her loyal maid Winnie and adolescent son Ralph help her run the place. Eithne, however, has always felt she's destined for higher things, and when excitement enters her life in the form of the lusty hulking form of Neville Turk the local butcher, she is swept up into a passionate affair. Meanwhile, the lives of those around them continues, with some disgruntlement.
If it weren't for the setting, Moggach's Orange 2008 longlisted novel would just be a bodice-ripper with added colour from peripheral characters. But Moggach has done her research and the smog-ridden, sooty London of 1916 - 18 really comes alive. Because the details are so convincing, the characters also rise from the page.
Very occasionally, a word that is so archaic crops up that one wonders whether it has been planted just for the sake of its age, for instance when Moggach describes Ralph's 'pollutions' at night (use your imagination). And, because the descriptions conjure such a vivid picture of the era and because the dialogue is so appropriate for that time, the odd anachronism jars, for instance, when one character mulls over whether someone has chronic bronchitis, a medical term that almost certainly wouldn't have been coined then. There's also a scene where it's mentioned that the maid normally washes seven pairs of Mrs Clay's underpants a week: one can't help wondering if in those days a daily bath and change of clothes was de rigeur.
While the novel couldn't be said to be prosaically ambitious, or, therefore, linguistically unusually outstanding, the simple, accessible language suits the story which chugs along briskly like the steam-belching trains described. It's the kind of atmospheric, brooding story that would adapt well to TV, and there's all the requisite angst, sex and moodiness.
All in all, In the Dark is a light but absorbing read with plenty of frissons of excitement. Not a literary masterpiece, but then, it doesn't pretend to be.
***00 1/2
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34 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wartime London if you like Nightwatch you'll love this as well., 19 Jul 2007
I adore Deborah Moggach's books, particular favourites being Tulip Fever, Stolen and Final Demand. Her latest novel does not disappoint. Set in wartime London the past comes to vibrant life. The story is great with a fantastic climax I won't reveal. The characters seem like real flesh and blood. Another great book to gollup down over a couple of evenings.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant!, 10 Jul 2008
In the Dark Deborah Moggach has long been one of the best writers in English, and under-appreciated, but this is her best book to date. Many authors have described WW1 profiteers, but none ever managed to give them so much as a vestige of humanity. Moggach achieves this by first showing us the woman who will fall in love with profiteer Turk. She shows us the woman's despair, and how she needs to be rescued. Result: we fear troubles arriving for Turk because of what they will do to Eithne. A brilliant strategy by a master writer.
As for Eithne's priggish son, Ralph, we see him skewered on a butterfly collector's needle.
If you already know Moggach's work, this will surpass your expectations. If you don't -- what a treat you have in store.
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