Dr James Darke has expelled himself from the world. He writes compulsively in his ‘coming of old age’ journal; he eats little, drinks and smokes a lot.
Meditating on what he has lost – the loves of his life, both dead and alive – he tries to console himself with the wisdom of the great thinkers and poets, yet finds nothing but disappointment.
Jenny Todd, Publisher at Canongate, have acquired World Rights in DARKE, Rick Gekoski’s debut novel, from Peter Straus at Rogers, Coleridge and White. Jenny Todd says: “DARKE is a stunning and distinctive novel full of living, learning and reading. Above all, it’s heart-breakingly true and wise. We are so proud to be publishing it.”
Canongate published DARKE as a lead title in hardback in the UK in February 2017, with the paperback edition due for release in the UK on 1st February 2018.
Some Reviews and Responses
PHILLIP PULLMAN
‘A wondrous book with two fathers, Kingsley Amis and Dante’
SEBASTIAN BARRY
‘Staggeringly accomplished. Heartbreakingly true. A shockingly monumental first novel’
JOHN NIVEN
‘Stuffed with more wisdom, bile, wit and tenderness than many writers create in a lifetime. In James Darke we have a hero as troubled and eternal as King Lear . . . And in Rick Gekoski we have a late-flowering genius of a novelist who proves it’s never too late to start a glittering career in fiction’
THE TIMES
‘Rick Gekoski’s impressive debut novel . . . Darke is both a tender and hard-hitting examination of grief and the slow, singular healing process . . . A brilliantly vivid creation . . . life-affirming and life-shattering’
THE HERALD
‘Gekoski has created an extraordinarily memorable character… This is an original and bleakly funny portrait of grief’
ECONOMIST
‘An immensely enjoyable elegy . . . done with precision and patience. I have never laughed as much at a book that made me weep so copiously’
STUART KELLY – THE SCOTSMAN
INTERVIEWS:
Radio National: Books Plus with Kate Evans – 21 May, 2017
RADIO NATIONAL – BOOKS PLUS WITH KATE EVANS