Dark Like Under, Alice Chadwick
Alice Chadwick’s superb first novel is set in a rural town during the 1980s. It opens with a nocturnal encounter between two grammar-school students and their gentle teacher Mr Ardennes. Soon after, he kills himself. During the next 24 hours, his colleagues and pupils struggle to cope with this sudden loss, and start to re-evaluate their own lives.
Chadwick deftly explores the tragedy’s aftermath from multiple perspectives. While the more authoritarian staff try to carry on as normal, the young teachers Miss Harper and Miss Wright are unable to focus; the charismatic English master Dr Cole feels fury at his friend’s death; and the stoical art mistress Sue Sharpe finds herself meditating on her own frustrated ambitions. Responses among the pupils are equally varied. Some remain largely preoccupied with their own concerns – like Robin, brooding on a falling-out with her best friend Thomasin (Tin). But others are deeply affected. James, a Catholic, worries that Mr Ardennes has committed a ‘mortal sin’ by taking his own life. Melancholic Claire feels acute disorientation: ‘Why can’t people just stay where they are?’. And charismatic, wayward Tin struggles with re-awakened memories of her mother’s similar ending years before.
Mr Ardennes’ death is not the novel’s sole focus, however. Chadwick writes perceptively about the complexities of adolescent relationships, especially the love triangle between Tin, Robin and aspiring photographer Jonah, and a nascent second one between Tin, ‘gentle giant’ Davy and his intelligent friend Miriam. (Indeed, most of the novel’s male characters seem to be in love with Tin.) She draws intriguing parallels between her characters’ lives and wider socio-economic conditions in the 1980s. And she remains mindful of the amusing aspects of school life. Scenes such as the aborted chemistry lesson and the English class in which the pupils struggle with a John Donne poem are comic masterpieces.
But perhaps the novel’s most pleasurable aspect is Chadwick’s spare yet poetic language. Small-town England is rendered magically beautiful through her descriptions, whether of coffee smelling ‘like a Carcassonne morning’, a bird singing ‘a run of fine, bright notes’, or autumn mist ‘thick like wool, soft like feathers’. This, and her compassionate tone, ensure that Dark Like Under never becomes depressing, and, indeed, is consistently enjoyable.
This is a marvellous debut. I can’t wait to read what Chadwick writes next.
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