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Darkmans | 
| Author: Nicola Barker
Publisher: HarperPerennial
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99
Buy New: £5.79
You Save: £3.20 (36%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 20382
Media: Paperback
Pages: 848
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5.1 x 2.1
ISBN: 0007193637
EAN: 9780007193639
ASIN: 0007193637
Publication Date: March 3, 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews: Read 21 more reviews...
Very weird December 30, 2008
This is one very weird book. Once you've established that and come to terms with it, it's much easier to enjoy. It's written in a style which I found intensely irritating, full of irregular paragraph spacing and with an obsessive overuse of brackets, and while I came to tolerate it I certainly never grew to like it.
For the first hundred or so pages I disliked it so much that I seriously considered giving up (an extreme measure for me). After that I became more engrossed in the story and decided to keep reading, which I am glad I did. Because for all its oddness, Darkmans is never dull and never predictable.
The story is hard to synopsise, but it centres around an unlikely group of eccentric characters living in the town of Ashford, who become caught up with the restless spirit (possibly) of a medieval jester. The characters are weird and not necessarily believable, but are original and fascinating at the same time and to my surprise I had warmed to most of them by the end. The plot (such as there is one) is too surreal to be followed closely.
Although I did find the style of writing annoying, it was effective. The sense of unease, of 'wrongness' is conjured up vividly, and I always felt disquieted whilst reading. There is a sense of a battle between the characters' desire to continue as normal and the dark undertones of the supernatural which keep forcing their way through the veneer of normality.
The reviews on this site prove what I suspected all along - you'll either love this book or you'll hate it. It certainly is the kind of novel people feel strongly about, one way or another. Although having said that I have rated it three stars, I suppose because I feel torn between the two extremes.
What's harder to say is which category any reader would fall into. I would say that readers who like gothic themes, surrealism, fantasy and experimental writing would be more likely to enjoy it than those who don't. But the only way you'll know for sure is to read it and find out...
 Love or hate December 15, 2008
Anyone who has trawled through all the reviews can see for themselves, opinions are usually either 5 stars or one star. There are a few middling but not many. I hated it. I agree with those who say the style of writing is particularly irritating and bears no resemblance to real life dialoge, there is a dreadful lack of plot (okay for some books, but the blurb leads one to expect the opposite)and its, quite frankly, boring. And for 840 pages, thats a lot of boredom.
I lot of hype in my opinion - the prose is far beneath the quality of that required for such a long work lacking in anything else to keep ones attention.
I have read a lot of strange books, I like different ideas and whacky reads. This wasn't one of them. Although I don't often give up on a book, 60 pages in, I feel there are too many good books out there to waste the time required to trawl through this.
Dull (boring) October 17, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is one of the most boring books I've ever read. The constant (about 3 times in every paragraph) use of brackets is really off putting (the author constantly points out the obvious) and hugely irritating and pointless (she uses these to include information that has no need to be in brackets). I trawled through it hoping that something may happen in line with the back cover description to no avail (it didn't happen).
Many times throughout the book I had to put it down out of sheer frustration it made me so angry. I would have binned it long before the 800 and odd page finale if I wasn't on holiday with no book shops to hand. Don't buy it. The only positive point was one chapter in which a repressed, stuffy character is forced to join a dinner party with a group of middle class couples - this is the only part of the book that I enjoyed. So thats about 25 pages out of 800+ that I liked - not much bang for your buck.
what a drivel October 15, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Shortlisted for Man Booker Prize?? Please! Makes you question the opinions of the Guardian and Observer reviewers. I wasted hours of my time, lost count of the use of SCOWL after about 30, "scowling" comes up on every other page - you call that good writing? The book is so frustrating it made me write my first review on the Internet ever.
 Magnificent September 28, 2008
I'm not going to go into long plot explanations - others have done it already far better than I could. I just want to say that this is a magnificent novel. I've not read any Nicola Barker before, and I was just blown away by the sheer audacity and exuberance of her prose. Yes, this book is long, but within a few pages I was completely gripped, barely able to put it down as it built up an exquisite dramatic tension. Barker develops, layer by layer, scene by scene, an almost anarchic assortment of characters, throws them together and shows us the unpredictable results. It's an almost cinematic approach to novel-writing, and makes for a demanding read - you work hard to piece together the clues scattered in her narrative - but it's totally engaging and thoroughly rewarding.
Not for a long time have I come across a writer with such a playful feel for language. Her observations, too, are startlingly fresh and apt. Yes, the novel does rely heavily on coincidence, but then so did Thomas Hardy. I don't think her aim is to be 'realistic'. We're drawn into a more magical and mysterious version of the 'real' world, and leave the novel both entranced and enriched by the experience.
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