Darkling by Laura Beatty FICTION

Posted 15:27, 1 June 2014

Darkling by Laura Beatty Hb. £16.99 published by Chatto & Windus

darkling cover

Laura Beatty's second novel is an absoulte joy, as was her first, Pollard (btw - it would be really great if the publishers would reissue Pollard with a more readable typeface).

The author describes what she does in Darkling as a "collapsing of time" so that the past and present lives of the two women, Mia in the present and Brilliana in the past are "distinct in texture but simultaneous". Creatures of the sky and earth are as key to the telling of this story as trees were to Pollard. "Animals live the same way now as they did in the seventeenth century". 

Read a marvellous Caught by the River conversation with Beatty here ... www.caughtbytheriver.net/2014/05/a-conversation-with-laura-beatty/