Ophelia Field
Conversation Signifying Nothing
Look at the Dark
By Nicholas Mosley
Secker & Warburg 214pp £16.99
Nicholas Mosley has always written ‘novels of ideas’, and one admires his increasingly bold experimentation, even into his eighties; but what might have been intriguing as a short story this time struggles to hold together as a novel.
The narrator of Look at the Dark is a nameless, aging Englishman, a linguistics philosopher turned TV pundit – the career change an expression, apparently, of his belief in Middle Eastern Gnosticism. After being hit by a car, he is doped up with morphine to kill the pain of a smashed leg and head. Such an infirm narrator is not a bad metaphor for the Western mind today; or, at least, his state of mind – struggling between chaos and reason – fits well with Mosley’s ‘clash of cultures’ side theme. Moments when the narrator’s psychological crisis is reflected in social observation – as when he pinpoints the sickening vacuity within the cycles of public discourse since 9/11 – are sharp, but unfortunately few.
Through a not always successful interlacing of past and present, the narrator examines his life’s relationships. A recurring theme is the way that seemingly manipulative, selfish or morally suspect acts – such as following a little girl home on a bus – may be suddenly redeemed by chance, or, as
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk