Reading in the Dark
Seamus Deane
 The story is told from the point of view of an anonymous young Irish Catholic boy. This novel-in-stories is about both the boy's coming of age and the "Troubles" of Northern Ireland from the partition of the island in the early 1920s through the post "Bloody Sunday" violence of the early-mid 1970s. Reading in the Dark was shortlisted for the 1996 Booker Prize. The setting mirrors mid-twentieth century Derry leading into the Troubles. Although the setting surrounds the narrator with violence, chaos, and sectarian division, Derry serves as a place for the narrator to grow, both physically and mentally. Despite the external surroundings, the narrator's tone never slips into complete despair, but maintains a sense of hope and humour throughout. The main focus of the novel is the narrator’s discovery of his family’s "secret" past and the effect that this discovery has on himself and his family. The book is constructed of dated short stories that are assembled into larger chapters, these chapters are then further divided into smaller "episodes" with titles such as: "Feet"; “Father”; “Mother”; and “Crazy Joe”. This structure provides the reader with brief glimpses of different aspects of the narrator’s life. These short stories share a common theme by involving the narrator's family’s past guilt and shame.A strong emphasis is put on how the division of Catholics and Protestants affected family life in Derry. Family secrets, community, the environment, faery stories, and economic despair are all central themes of the novel and are all contributing factors to how the narrator views the world around. Seamus Deane has often been asked why "Reading in the Dark" was not called a "memoir" instead of a "novel" because of Deane's almost identical upbringing to the main protagonist. He usually does not give a straight answer which raises questions about how much of the book might be Deane's life and how much is fiction.