BOOK CLUB
CAMBRIDGE EDI T ION Boo k Clu b BRINGING YOU TOP NEW FICTION PICKS, AUTHOR INTERVIEWS, DISCOUNTS AND LOTS MORE BOOK CHAT, THE EDITION BOOK CLUB IS A PARTNERSHIP WITH CAMBRIDGE LITERARY FESTIVAL AND HEFFERS
THE LIGHT IN THE DARK INTERVIEW BY CHARLOTTE GRIFFITHS THIS MONTH’S BOOK CHOICE IS A HYMN TO THE DARKNESS OF WINTER AND TO THE POWER OF THE HUMAN SPIRIT TO OVERCOME IT, WRITTEN BY HORATIO CLARE
T he Light in the Dark takes the in on him every couple of days or so to check in – as you might do with a friend who’s struggling. Following a professionally challenging year, including a hard winter in which he went “mad with depression”, we join Horatio at the end of the summer of 2017, where he has resolved to write this book as a torch raised against the darkness and form of a diary, following writer Horatio Clare’s progress through the winter months, dropping
“embrace this winter like a summer.” He writes: “Depression kills your power of vision, but I will practise looking and looking outwards like an exercise, as though I am training for an expedition… I will not lose touch with nature… This diary is a refuge, a thing to do, something to put work and time into, a defence against the hopelessness.” Following the great tradition of British nature writing, The Light in the Dark ’s chapters include passages of meditative, heartfelt prose describing the effects of
the passing seasons that tips on the edge of a stream of consciousness: “It does not do to romanticise drizzle, rain on motorways, months of strip- lighting, office windows black at four o’clock, concrete skies, sock-damp, rain- prickle, mould-steam, deadbeaten fields, sodden livestock and the chilly tug like food-sucking mud that winter can exert upon the spirit.” Passages seamlessly slip from lyrical observation of the natural world to recording the humdrum of the daily u
21
C A M B S E D I T I O N . C O . U K
J A N U A R Y 2 0 1 9
Powered by FlippingBook