As a prolific writer of literary fiction, Rupert Thomson has had plenty of practice in creating a good story. In Dark is the Morning, he seems drawn to the question of whether a satisfactory narrative structure can be imposed on life. The tug between the meaningless, chaotic nature of reality and the more conventional art of storytelling is at the centre of the novel, which concerns the ill-fated romance between the narrator, Gino, and the enigmatic Franca. Thomson even appears awkward about how neatly fabular this tale turns out to be in his opening chapter: ‘I still find the whole thing hard to believe.’
This self-consciousness is apparent throughout, with Thomson making repeated reference to the power of storytelling in his characters’ lives. Gino needs ‘a story for myself, a story I could live with’. Indeed, everyone is ‘looking for something that will make them feel better about their lives’. Words have the capacity to turn the meaningless into the profound; they are ‘able to open up a whole new world with one short sentence’.
Thomson also leans heavily on the weird, with whimsical elements peppered throughout. The setting of Italy’s Abruzzo region is ‘characterised by a deep affinity with magic and superstition’. Witchcraft, mythology, urban legends, dreams and telepathy seem as ordinary a part of life as Gino’s job in IT at Lidl. The novel reads like a modern fairy tale, combining conventional narrative tropes with the deeply strange and inexplicable. By imposing these neat storytelling practices on what is essentially an exploration of masculine psychological unravelling, Thomson suggests that what makes a story traditional is also what makes it inherently fantastical.
Fate, too, plays a major role. Our doomed couple are ‘bound in a covenant’ together that is ‘written in the stars’. This at least serves to deliver a more satisfying ‘moral of the story’, as jealous Gino can excuse himself from taking responsibility for his actions, and instead ‘marvel at the strangeness of it all’.
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