posted on 01 Apr 2022

The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper

This 1973 fantasy novel lends its name to what is a sequence of five books that has become something of a cult classic. The first book in the series, Over Sea, Under Stone  that appeared in 1965, is reviewed here on the Letterpress site and paves the way for The Dark Is Rising - which is a far more powerful and substantial platform for the sequels that were to follow.

Will Stanton, the seventh son of a seventh son, is approaching his eleventh birthday on a cold and snowy midwinter day. However, Will has an uneasy feeling that something is not quite right and he’s having some odd, possibly magic experiences he can’t quite account for. It soon becomes clear that Will is, in fact, a bit special – he is born to be one of  ‘the old ones’ who are agents of ‘the Light’ and in constant battle with the forces of ‘the Dark’ who are constantly striving to plunge the world into a cold abyss. It’s Will’s fate to be the last old one who will reunite the six talisman that constitute the Circle of Signs and the story follows his perilous tracking down of the vital bastion against the power of the Dark.

In outline this is what has become pretty standard fantasy fare – a battle between good and evil, a champion of the good and a quest full of jeopardy successfully completed against the odds – but it is lifted from the basic or standard fantasy by the quality of the writing.

The simplicity of the basic plot outline is deceptive because Cooper introduces all manner of complexity that confuses time frames, reality and fantasy and constantly builds tension at a pace that is unusual in this genre. I personally can’t stick with fantasy novels that obsess over the detailed creation of other worldliness and, as a result, run on to 600 pages or more and so finding someone who can achieve the same impact in a touch over 200 pages is to be welcomed.

The book is regularly cited as one of the top children’s or young adult books in the USA where the British author made her home and it may be because she is often thought of as an American writer that The Dark Is Rising hasn’t been quite the popular classic status that was achieved by Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Alan Garner or Philip Pullman. But the power of Cooper’s story isn’t just that it creates such a remarkably spare but convincing fantasy world but that it also deals with the issues faced by an eleven year old on the verge of adolescence – the way the excitement and  terrors of the big, bad outside world often collide with the desire to continue to have the comfort of the predictable, safe family space. This is an aspect of the novel noted by Sarah Crown in her review of the book published in The Guardian in 2010:

“As well as a thrilling, flawlessly structured adventure … The Dark Is Rising is a perfect coming-of-age story. Throughout the book, Will moves between the warmth and safety of his family's soothing seasonal traditions of lighting the yule fire and decorating the Christmas tree, and the dark, uncharted territory, compelling but terrifying, of his new self, powerful but isolated. … Throughout the book, the snow works as a metaphor for all of these different states: for Will's departing innocence, when it comes on his birthday, "smooth and white and inviting"; for the cold beauty of the Light when it glimmers and sifts; for the threatening brutality of the Dark, when the blizzards don't let up and the element turns malevolent, pushing in through windows, piling up at doors.”

I’m quite surprised that the book hasn’t found a decent adaptation for television and become a staple of the Christmas schedule. A film adaptation was attempted called The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising but the kindest thing that could be said for it is that it really didn’t come off. The space is there for a more faithful adaptation…….come on you t.v. producers, pull your fingers out.

You can get paperback copies of this fairly cheaply but, as you might guess, hardback first editions cost a small fortune.

 

Terry Potter

April 2022