Reading in the Dark

Dean, Seamus. Reading in the Dark. Vintage, 1998.

Deane presents Reading in the Dark as a “novel” and I am unclear as to how much is fact and how much is fiction. Much of what he wrote about the dynamic of the Irish family situation rings very true in my own reality. Irish families are a topic close to my heart. His discussion of the things left unsaid in Irish family life rings true and is echoed in many other books about Irish and Irish-American culture, ranging from Alice Carey’s I’ll Know it When I See it, to Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes, to Tom Hayden’s Irish on the Inside. Much of what he writes about the continuing violence, prejudice and trouble in Northern Ireland is factual—even if his characters are fictitious. And I don’t know that they are.

Dean presents a compelling look at life in embattled Northern Ireland. He presents to the reader an intimate portrait of an Irish-Catholic family. He offers the superstitions surrounding this family. He allows the reader to accept that a ghost can be a spirit or a memory—that both are haunting and can be frightening enough to devastate lives.

The story is presented in a first person child’s view, albeit it an omniscient view. Dean walks us through the confusion of growing up an outcast in his community—which is itself outcast from the society in which it is enmeshed. We, as readers, are presented with several different perspectives of the outsider. Dean’s mother keeps herself just beyond the intimacy of her family, specifically her husband and sister, by keeping her secrets. Secrets that eventually drive her insane. Her husband, Dean’s father, remains outside because of what he does not know, as well as what he does. Each of the children in this family is left on the outside because none of them knows the whole truth.

For Irish-Americans (like Dean) reaching back to untangle the things unsaid can be a healing process. To write about it offers others a door into the silences in their own families. I have read many books about Irish and Irish-American families and the recurring theme the prevailing silence—and how families function, or don’t, around that. Dean’s direct insertion of the larger socio-political picture into the dynamic speaks more directly to the issue and perhaps can offer, at least for Dean, a way to find definition to who he is—and why.