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Reading in the Dark
Reading in the Dark
Jul 7, 2025 2:13 AM

Author:Seamus Deane

Reading in the Dark

This is the story of a haunted Irish childhood.

The setting is Derry in the Northern Ireland of the 40s and 50s, fraught with political hatred, family secrets and lethal intrigue. As a young boy tries to make sense of life, poverty and violence shift and obscure the facts; meanwhile his night-time reading of Irish legends weaves enchantment through reality. Claustrophobic but lyrically charged, breathtakingly sad but vibrant and unforgettable, this is one of the finest books about growing up – in Ireland or anywhere – that has ever been written.

See also: The Green Road by Anne Enright

Reviews

Reading In The Dark is a swift, masterful transformation of family griefs and political violence into something at once rhapsodic and heartbreaking. If Isaac Babel had been born in Derry, he might have written this sudden, brilliant book.

—— Seamus Heaney

Marvellous...almost impossible to put down

—— Blake Morrison , Independent on Sunday

Go into your nearest bookshop and buy Reading In The Dark... A novel that no reader with any concern for their heart or mind should be without

—— A. L. Kennedy , Scotsman

A wonderful evocation of childhood; a vibrant, unforgettable fragment that leaves you aching for more

—— Robert McCrum , Observer

A profoundly emotive and seamlessly structured exploration of loss and regret. It is also funny and authentic. What more could one ask of a book?

—— Antonia Logue , Guardian

This is the work of a master story-teller...a book to buy, read and read again

—— Julia Neuberger , Sunday Tribune

In language strikingly lucid and scenes fired by a spare, aching passion, Reading in the Dark combines the intimacy of a memoir with the suspense of a detective story

—— New York Times

Intense and powerful . . . written with deep expression and enormous feeling. It is a marvellous historical adventure.

—— Sunday Express

Kristian is a writer with rare power to grab you at the opening of the story and to keep the pace going. Lancelot is a powerful reworking of the King Arthur myths. The pages turn by themselves.

—— JUSTIN HILL, author of Viking Fire

My impression as I was reading Lancelot was of a flare being held up in the gloom of this peculiarly dark passage of history. Every detail illuminated, every motive believable, every heart laid bare. A bright intensity but passing away, guttering, about to go out. And, by the time his tale comes to its conclusion, that seems to be his point. A gentle lament at the onrushing of a dark and inexorable tide which comes to extinguish a bright and golden age of Britain forever. Lancelot is a gem of a book. If there were six stars, it could have them all. Or, to use the words of Spinal Tap, “This one goes to eleven.” Loved it.

—— THEODORE BRUN, author of The Wanderer Chronicles

Truly magical . . . reads with the authority and gravitas of Manda Scott's Boudica books, such that I found it utterly believable throughout . . . it was a stroke of genius to retell this legend through Lancelot's POV, the betrayer rather than the betrayed.

—— ANNA STEPHENS, author of Godblind

Giles Kristian’s brilliant take on the Arthurian love-triangle is impressively fresh and original . . . the language is arrestingly beautiful, poetic and poignant; the fights are satisfyingly bloody; the background is a believably muddy, pagan and benighted post-Roman Britain, against which Giles unfolds a tender and tragic love story. We know it will end badly, but reading this enchanting and elegiac novel, you can’t help rooting for Lancelot and his love and hoping it will all work out somehow by the final page.

—— ANGUS DONALD, author of Outlaw

Authentic, epic, and wonderfully Arthurian.

—— CHRISTIAN CAMERON, author of The Ill-Made Knight

Kristian is one of the finest storytellers in the genre . . . this is a novel that you feel as much as you read. What we end up with is utterly staggering . . . Giles has surpassed the Cornwell trilogy in a single title.

—— ROBIN CARTER , Parmenion Books

Fiercely beautiful and gripping.

—— ANNA SMITH-SPARK, author of The Court of Broken Knives

It’s difficult to think of any author more gifted to retell Lancelot’s story than Giles Kristian . . . [he] writes so beautifully. He brings these post-Roman years so vividly to life. I love the way in which the recent Roman past haunts this landscape. There is myth here, there is the Druid Merlin, and we’re reminded of many of the famous Arthurian legends, such as Excalibur, but Giles Kristian evokes a time rooted in history and in the land around us even now . . . his writing comes closest to the feeling, mood and beauty of the Old and Middle English verse that I love so much . . . there is power here, deep expression and enormous feeling. I cried and cried as the story ended in the only way it could.

—— KATE ATHERTON , For Winter Nights

This is a story that is packed full of imagery and meaning. Kristian’s prose is unique – stunningly beautiful without ever feeling overdone . . . a wonderfully textured story from a perspective I had never encountered before. Truly masterful storytelling.

—— FANTASY HIVE

[A] gem of a novel. With a sure sense of place, and a convincing portrayal of life lived at the edgy margins, it vividly plots the landscape of the heart en route to a gripping and ultimately redemptive finale.

—— Daily Mail

Raw and redemptive.

—— Sunday Business Post

Gripping and beautiful.

—— Image magazine

Ryan's third novel is an elegant, unflinching, entirely brilliant look at the waywardness of desire. . . . searing honesty that is raw but utterly riveting.

—— Psychologies magazine

A powerful story that will pull you into a whirlwind of emotion and pain, but also the faintest glimmer of hope.

—— Irish Country magazine

Shines through its female characters.

—— Irish Tatler

A stunning story that deserves great success.

—— Good Housekeeping

All We Shall Know blew me away, left me blubbering on my commute and wide awake at 2 a.m. . . . He excels at first-person narrative, and it's this that makes All We Shall Know unforgettable.

—— Stylist magazine

An intense, dramatic story . . . rather touching.

—— Mail on Sunday

His best yet . . . I kept re-reading paragraphs and whole pages to savour Ryan's remarkable prose. The book imbues profanity with poetry, and the characters, for all their flaws, are beautifully and sympathetically drawn.

—— Hot Press

Unflinching.

—— Radio Times

A wonderful novel.

—— S Magazine

In a word, this book is stunning.

—— The Bookseller

McEwan muses on love, empathy and the morality and ethics of artificial intelligence… very good.

—— Richard Dismore , Daily Mirror, *Book of the Month*

An important literary contribution to the AI debate, one of the great questions of our time.

—— Country and Townhouse

Precisely rendered and well observed… [McEwan] neatly delineates humanity’s remorseless self-demotion from the centre of the universe to flotsam.

—— Lionel Shriver , Standpoint

[An] undeniably another excellent novel from McEwan, who demonstrates that he can conjure up challenging characters, witty dialogue and moral ambiguity when dealing with sex robots just as brilliantly as he does on literary turf.

—— Hilary Lamb , Institution of Engineering and Technology

Dexterous, utterly gripping and intensely thought-provoking.

—— attitude, *Book of the Month*

Deeply unnerving… What starts out as a darkly funny ménage à trois becomes an unsettling examination of the human condition. Bold, clever.

—— Laura Powell , Sunday Telegraph

The latest novel from my favourite author tackles the subjects of artificial intelligence and what it is to be human. He does this in a surprising, original way, and Adam, the strong, seductive “robot”, is a character that will haunt me for a long time.

—— Victoria Hislop , The Week

[This] new, gripping, beautifully written and constructed, disturbing, and provocative novel…is a thrilling read… the chilling conclusions that hyper-rationalism can come to are brilliantly described.

—— Roger Jones , BJGP

McEwan maintains his status as a master of fiction.

—— Maria Crawford , Financial Times, *Summer Reads of 2019*

A new collection of stories that explores the complex - and often darkly funny - connections between gender, sex, and power across genres.

—— The Week, *Summer reads of 2019*

Ian McEwan’s sublimely playful new novel transports you back to the Eighties but with some major changes, including eerily life-like robots… Dark and slyly funny, it’ll also give your brain a workout.

—— Neil Armstrong and Hephizbah Anderson , Mail on Sunday, *Summer Reads of 2019*
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