The last time I read The Dark Is Rising was more than ten years ago, in summer, and while I always love this book, there’s an extra magic in reading it during the time of year in which it’s set, in the dark and cold days of midwinter, with the festive pleasures of Christmas all around me in real life as well as in the book. This time around I probably read it a bit slower, too, because for the first two-thirds of the book I was pacing my reading for the Twitter readalong (#TheDarkIsReading), though after Christmas I couldn’t keep from just reading on: I finished the book on December 26th, totally unable to ration out the last third until the action of the book ends on Twelfth Night.
The Dark Is Rising is a fantasy quest narrative, a Chosen One narrative, and the story of a centuries-long battle between Light and Dark, all of which are fine and satisfying things, but what makes this book, for me, is the rest of it: how well-written it is, and the sense it gives of landscape, of place, and of the daily life of a large and happy family in an English village, all the ordinary sweetness of Christmas, even as the Dark threatens the everyday peace of village life. I love passages like this:
Out of the boxes came all the familiar decorations that would turn the life of the family into a festival for twelve nights and days: the golden-haired figure for the top of the tree; the strings of jewel-coloured lights. Then there were the fragile Christmas-tree balls, lovingly preserved for years. Half-spheres whorled like red and gold-green seashells, slender glass spears, spider-webs of silvery glass threads and beads; on the dark limbs of the tree they hung and gently turned, shimmering. (79)
Other choice Christmas phrases: at one point Cooper writes about the “enchanted expectant space” of Christmas morning (127), and then, later on Christmas Day, writes about church bells in a storm “chiming through the grey whirling world around them, brightening it back into Christmas” (139). So good.
I think it’s hard to talk about the fantasy/quest elements of the book without spoilers, or without getting bogged down in detail, so I’m not really going to try, but I will say that I love that part of the fantasy involves time-slips, where the protagonist/hero, 11-year-old Will, finds himself in the past on a number of occasions. I like the sense of history that those scenes bring, and the sense of the vast expanse of time.
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