Synopses & Reviews
Interspersing the magic of fairy tales with a wry yet touching narrative, Amanda Craig examines the thin line between fantasy and reality, creativity and mental illness.
Benedick Hunter is a recently divorced, out-of-work, thirty-nine-year-old actor. Feeling both guilty and sorry for himself, he blunders through weekends with his two spirited children and fends off various women desperate to snare an eligible man, all the time fearing that he is on the brink of a nervous breakdown.
His life takes on a new direction, however, when he discovers a long-forgotten book of fairy tales his mother wrote and illustrated decades earlier. Drawn to its pages, he becomes entranced by the hints of reality embedded in the stories, from thinly veiled portraits of his own father and his parents acquaintances to alluring glimpses of his mother as a young woman. Convinced that the stories can explain his mothers suicide when he was six and put an end to his agonizing mood swings, Benedick embarks on a journey to untangle the past, a journey that eventually takes him to the heart of his own nature, modern fatherhood, manic depression, and the elusive character of fairy-tales.
With imagination and incisive wit, Amanda Craig has written a novel that was selected as one of the "best of the years books" by the The Times of London, which wrote, "Although not frightening enough to give you sleepless nights, Craigs wonderful, page-turning storytelling will keep you up way past your time for bed."
Review
"An intriguing idea is marred by poor execution....Although the story is engaging and maintains interest, its weaknesses overpower its strengths. Neither Benedick's mania nor his children are convincingly depicted...and the book reads as if it were switching genres from realistic fiction to Gothic romance." Library Journal
Review
"This is a sneakily beguiling book, an improbable but very effective concoction that mixes the hypnotic, elemental forces invoked by Laura's stories with wry humor about such mundane vexations as suddenly having to take care of the kids for the weekend and the indignities of an actor's life....Craig also manages to negotiate some complicated territory without resorting to easy answers....In a Dark Wood is studded with unforgettable images...but Craig keeps things fleet and economical there's no need to clot up your story with 'literary' prose when you can scatter gems in your wake. Everything Craig is good at describing Laura's haunting illustrations so that you'd swear you grew up with them yourself; ratcheting up the intensity of Benedick's mania gradually, so that it takes you almost as long as it takes him to realize he's losing it she pulls off so deftly, so unshowily that it's easy to miss the fact that you're in the hands of a master." Laura Miller, Salon.com (read the entire Salon review)
Review
"Clever, imaginative, and even darkly humorous, Craig's novel, like a book of beloved fairy tales, gives us a hero to root for and an inventive, multilayered story." Kristine Huntley, Booklist
Review
"[A] dreamy, spellbinding novel....With a sure hand, Craig brings chilling suspense and dark humor to a stylized study of the loss of childhood innocence, the complexities of creativity, and the correlation between artistic genius and mental health all expertly cloaked in the symbols and metaphors of fairy tales." Publishers Weekly
Synopsis
The author of Foreign Bodies, A Private Place and A Vicious Circle pens an imaginative, darkly humorous novel about a middle-aged man who finds the key to his own erratic nature in the popular fairy tales written by the mother he barely knew.
Synopsis
Thirty-nine, recently divorced, jobless, Benedick Hunter is an actor heading in the exact opposite direction of happily ever after: everything from spending time with his own children to the prospect of dating brings him down. So when he comes across a children's book his mother Laura wrote, he decides that her life and work--haunting stories replete with sinister woods and wicked witches and brave girls who battle giants--hold the key to figuring out why his own life is such a mess.
Setting out to find out why Laura killed herself when he was six, Benedick travels from his native England to the U.S. in search of her friends and his own long-lost relatives. As he grows obsessed with Laura's books and their veiled references to reality Benedick enters into a dark wood-a dark wood that is both hilariously real and terrifyingly psychological. It is then that his story becomes an exploration not only of his mother's genius but also of the nature of depression, and of the healing power of storytelling in our lives.
About the Author
Amanda Craig is the author of Foreign Bodies, A Private Place and A Vicious Circle, which is currently being developed for BBC television. In a Dark Wood is the first of her novels to be published in the United States. Craig, who writes regularly for The Times, The Sunday Times, and The New Statesman, lives in London.
Reading Group Guide
1. Contemplating his divorce, Benedick describes his state of mind: “What frightened me most was, I could no longer believe in my own life as a story. Everyone needs a story, a part to play in order to avoid the realization that life is without significance. How else do any of us survive? Its what makes life bearable, even interesting. When it becomes neither, people say youve lost the plot. Or just lost it” [p. 19]. At the end of the novel, when Benedick finds acting work, he concludes: “It was this, I think, as much as the lithium, that made me better. It meant that I hadnt been written out of the story of my life. People say that life has no story, that to believe it does is a symptom of madness, and I had thought this, too. But I knew I couldnt go on living without some version of the truth. Every version has its blessing and it curse” [p. 301]. Is Benedicks statement that “everyone needs a story” just the artist speaking, or is he expressing a universal truth? What is the story of Benedicks life? What is his version of the truth and how does it evolve?
2. How does each fairy tale that Benedick reads reveal more and more about Lauras life and state of mind? What is the significance of the order of the tales in North of Nowhere as read by Benedick throughout the novel? Why might Craig have chosen to name her novel for Lauras first book, In a Dark Wood, when it is actually Lauras fairy tales in North of Nowhere that structure the plot of the novel?
3. Ruth tells Benedick: “If you read fairy tales carefully, youll notice they are mostly about people who arent heroes. They dont have special powers, or gifts. Often they are despised as stupid. They are bullied, beaten up, robbed, starved. But they find they are stronger than their misfortunes” [p. 25]. Is Ruth correct? If so, can “The Wild Wood” [pp. 200—207] be accurately characterized as a “fairy tale” or is it something else? How might the genre of fairy tales be defined or explained? How do fairy tales compare to other literary genres? Is it correct to assume that fairy tales are childrens literature, and, if so, why?
4. How does Benedicks illness manifest itself physically-especially after he arrives in America? If his divorce can be understood as the trigger for his depression, what might have triggered his high?
5. What accounts for the fluctuations in Benedicks personality, such as when he gives his son and daughter each a smack [p. 57] and when he buys them fourteen pairs of shoes [pp. 253-254]? Are they significant in any way or are they a normal reaction to the circumstances in his life?
6. Benedick says of his divorce: “And this is the most hideous thing about somebody falling out of love with you. When someone loves you, you show your best self to them, to the world. When you lost that love, you lose your best self, and are shown instead how loathsome and contemptible you truly are. To be seen without love by someone who once loved you is to be made lower than anyone can endure” [p. 59]. And later, Benedick lucidly realizes: “I thought of the people I had questioned when trying to find out about my mother. I had been so ready to dislike and condemn them, but it was really myself I had been disliking and condemning. Youre either unbearable to other people or youre unbearable to yourself, the psychiatrist had said. What if I were both?” [p. 295] Are Benedicks two statements reconcilable? Is Benedicks earlier statement symptomatic of a man recently divorced or of a manic depressive or both? Can Benedicks feelings and behavior towards other people be attributed to his mental illness or his personality? Are the two so intertwined that it is impossible to separate them?
7. Benedick offers Flora an explanation of “mad”: “Its when you see or feel things differently from other people” [p. 128]. Does In a Dark Wood confirm or refute this definition? How else might one define madness?
8. The following exchange between Benedick, Ruth, and Cosmo is one example of how the English personality and temperament is compared and contrasted with the American personality and temperament:
“Is that true, that you can become anything? Cosmo asked.
“Yes,” said Ruth firmly. “Thats what Americans believe.”
“Do English people believe that?”
I [Benedick] cleared my throat. “No, not really.”
“What do we believe in?”
“In irony,” I said. (p. 129)
In what other ways are English and American psyches and temperaments compared and contrasted in the novel?
9. Benedick says: “I grew up in a generation which had no idea that women were going to be our equals. You were just supposed to keep going no matter what. But now theres no place for us. Were a biological dead end. Its stupid to even keep on living” [p. 24]. Does this accurately describe the current state of affairs with regard to equality between the sexes? What was the gender balance between Benedick and Georgie, and how did it affect their relationship? From what Benedick is able to piece together, how did gender equality or lack thereof affect Lauras life and career?
10. Benedick comments: “ It was strange, I thought, the way all the women I had interviewed about my mother spent at least as much time describing their own lives as hers” [p. 182]. What do this and other comments in the novel reveal about the differences between males and females? Is the illness manifested differently in Benedick than Laura because of their different genders?
11. How could Benedicks relationship with his children be characterized? Is he a typical father? Are his frustrations and celebrations normal? Are they indicative of his illness, and, if so, how?
12. How accurately does Craig, a female author, give her male protagonist an authentic male voice? How does her choice to narrate the novel in the first person affect the readers understanding of Benedick? Of his mental illness?
13. What does acting mean to Benedick? How is it different than another occupation? How might it take on a different meaning for him in light of his mental condition?
14. What is the implication of Jane Hollys statement to Benedick that “artists are nearly always called [mad]. Some are genuinely so. What they do isnt the product of being nice, or even particularly sane. Theyre running over the Bridge of One Hair, like Lolly” [p. 185]? How does the artistic temperament differ from that of non-artists?
15. How is the creative process of acting compared to that of writing in the novel?
“An absorbing, often dreamlike story.” -
The New York Times
In her novel, In a Dark Wood, Amanda Craig takes the reader on one mans manic ride through the hidden depths of his family history into his own disturbed mind. We hope the following introduction, discussion questions, suggestions for further reading, and author biography enhance your groups reading of this mesmerizing and inventive exploration of the intersection between manic depression, reality, imagination, and creative self-expression.