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About the author and blogger ...

Anne Goodwin’s drive to understand what makes people tick led to a career in clinical psychology. That same curiosity now powers her fiction.
A prize-winning short-story writer, she has published three novels and a short story collection with small independent press, Inspired Quill. Her debut novel, Sugar and Snails, was shortlisted for the 2016 Polari First Book Prize.
Away from her desk, Anne guides book-loving walkers through the Derbyshire landscape that inspired Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.
Subscribers to her newsletter can download a free e-book of award-winning short stories.

TELL ME MORE

War and its repercussions: Tom Vowler’s That Dark Remembered Day

16/5/2014

5 Comments

 
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Stephen is in trouble, suspended from work after a violent outburst that’s left him shaken and his wife concerned for their shared future.  She wants him to talk about his childhood; he is terrified of resurrecting the ghosts of the past.  Yet when he gets a phone call telling him his mother is unwell, he decides it’s time to pay her a visit in the town where the events of a single day shattered so many lives.

You know you’re in safe hands with a writer who uses the word crescendo¹ correctly on the first page, and comes with an endorsement from Alison Moore.  That Dark Remembered Day bubbles with elegant descriptions from the Cornish coast to the windswept Falklands as the past is uncovered layer by layer until the full horror of that day’s events are finally revealed.


The novel is structured in four parts, five if we count the prologue, with the third-person narrative shifting between 2012 and a period of months thirty years before.  We see Stephen in the last moments of childhood, conscious of his father’s increasingly strange behaviour but more preoccupied with his own betrayal of his friend by taking his girl.  The story then develops through the point of view of Stephen’s mother, her husband newly discharged from the army, struggling to eke out their meagre finances and keep up a semblance of normality for the children.  We then follow Richard, the husband and father, the soldier unsuited to soldiering called to fight a war in an island in the South Atlantic neither he nor his comrades had heard of before.  Finally, the narrative returns to Stephen as he gathers his memories together to return home to his wife and daughter.

This is a novel well worth reading for the poignancy of the events it portrays and its eloquent prose.  Yet the fact that the exact nature of the tragedy is withheld for so long from the reader makes it both challenging to review without spoilers and, on occasion, a slightly frustrating read.  While it’s in keeping with the characters of both Stephen and his mother that they would not discuss the tragedy that befell them, and it’s also in the nature of such a trauma that words seem inadequate to the task, I think it might have been more satisfying to have had more clues earlier on, especially when one is tempted to guess.  Or perhaps I was too literal in my reading and others would have realised immediately from the prologue exactly what had occurred:

… by the side of the road a mound that looked both ridiculous and commonplace.  Still as a rock, it had been covered almost entirely by an old grey blanket, and as he passed it, as his mind processed what it was, he felt his heart quicken, da-dum da-dum, as if it were dancing. (p3)

Nevertheless, the revelation is worth waiting for and ties together several plot strands.  Overall, this is a tragic and touching exploration of the aftermath of terror.

¹ As any musician knows, crescendo means a gradual increase in volume but is increasingly misused as a synonym for pinnacle.

I’d welcome your feedback on any aspect of this post.  As it’s something I’m grappling with in my own writing, I’m particularly seeking opinions on how to handle “the big reveal” in novels that centre around confronting the past.

Thanks to Headline books for my review copy of That Dark Remembered Day

I’ll be hosting a post by Tom Vowler in a lighter mood on 26 June as part of his blog tour for this book.  To be sure not to miss it you can subscribe to Annecdotal via email by going to the sidebar.
Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think. If you've enjoyed this post, you might like to sign up via the sidebar for regular email updates and/or my quarterly Newsletter.
5 Comments
Charli Mills link
16/5/2014 05:25:32 pm

Your reviews increasingly add books to my reading stack. Not a bad thing; I think it's important that writers find good works to fill our minds. As to the "big reveal" I think that's what we are exploring in a minute way with this week's flash fiction. The "big reveal" can open the book; the writer can start with the twist. What's important is that the writer keeps building the stakes. By opening with the "big reveal," you have to show how the character got there, reacted or changed as a result. By hiding it, the writer prolongs the tension but risks letting down the reader or getting the reader frustrated by wanting to know what happened. The key is to keep building the stakes while progressing the evolution of the character's experience, reaction and ultimate resolution.

Reply
geoff link
17/5/2014 01:29:21 am

I agree with Charli. I have to say a lot of books where the big reveal is held back can leave me frustrated - cheated almost - because you know the writer is playing with you. Where the protagonist is conveniently looking the wrong way half way through and misses the chance to find the truth. The best big reveals are ones that I didn't even realise were a possibility - maybe the Wasp Factory by Iain Banks is the best example of that I can think of right now - sad loss that. You do have to be ruthless with yourself, I think, and decide how long you can go on holding back something vital and not annoy your reader. For me books that reveal all but tease you with the journey are as, if not more, compelling reads.

Reply
Annecdotist
17/5/2014 05:49:33 am

Thank you both for your feedback. I hadn't thought, Charli, how it ties in with this week's flash challenge (which tut-tut, I haven't yet done).
I think the best reveals are those where you don't suspect it but it makes perfect sense when it comes. Can't remember The Wasp Factory ending, but my favourite is We Need to Talk about Kevin where you think you know what's happened right from the start, but then there's that little bit extra. But, as we all read differently, I'm sure it's really challenging to get that right as a writer, the clues will be clearer to some than they are to others.
Interestingly, the book I'm reading at the moment seems to be saving the reveal to the end – maybe it's also about how much you manage to entertain the reader on the way there.

Reply
Lori Schafer link
21/5/2014 10:55:14 pm

I think you have to strike a very delicate balance between withholding information to maintain the reader's interest and revealing enough not to irritate them. It sounds as if this one may have waited too long - because if you felt that way, then other readers must, too.

Reply
Annecdotist
22/5/2014 02:41:54 am

Thanks for your confidence in my reading, Lori ;) I'm sure there are others who would see my way although I've also seen Twitter comments that it was handled right. That's the difficulty with reviews and processing feedback on our own writing: we do want slightly different things from the text

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