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Going Into a Dark House

by Jane Gardam

3.91 · rating details · 11 ratings · 4 reviews

'Molly Fielding's mother had been a terrible woman...' A terrible woman indeed. One need only to look at the old sepia photograph to see a vision of nastiness. The look of cunning, the self-satisfied smile, the aura of hauteur as she watches the little Italian photographer go about his business. They say the camera never lies, but maybe this one did...'Going into the Dark ...more

Paperback, 183 pages

Published September 1st 1995 by Little Brown and Company (first published 1994)

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Nov 10, 2010

Buried In Print rated it

Shelves: short-stories, read-in-2010

One of the things that I especially enjoyed about Going into a Dark House was the consistent sense of satisfaction after each story. I spread them out over a month's time and made sure not to rush. Even if I wanted to read on, after reading one of the stories, I forced myself to set the collection aside and pick up something else instead, which added to my sense of satisfaction I think. It felt like reading an Alice Munro collection, I just wanted to "have" the next story, not even car...more

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Jun 17, 2011

Tony rated it

This set of short stories could be subtitled Tales of Spiritual Starvation. A duchess sweeps cheeses and fruit into her handbag at a charity event; market gardeners wading through produce can barely set a table for their children or themselves; other children grow into desiccated high-flyers.

While pettiness and prejudice can be life-altering, there is little sadism. Usually the suffering comes from people who are simply stripped clean of imagination or emotional generosity, apart fro...more

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Mar 21, 2011

Cath Murphy rated it

Shelves: fiction

Probably the best short story writer alive today.

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Feb 09, 2012

Donna is currently reading it

Shelves: abandoned

Shocking, but I found a collection of Gardam stories that didn't make my heart sing.

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Jan 14, 2012

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Shelves: short-stories, literary-fiction, wishlist, to-buy

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About Jane Gardam

Jane Mary Gardam OBE is a British author of children's and adult fiction. She also reviews for the Spectator and the Telegraph, and writes for BBC radio. She lives in Kent, Wimbledon and Yorkshire. She has won numerous literary awards including the Whitbread Award, twice. She is mother of Tim Gardam, Principal of St Anne's College, Oxford. Jane has been awarded the Heywood Hill Literary Prize for ...moreJane Mary Gardam OBE is a British author of children's and adult fiction. She also reviews for the Spectator and the Telegraph, and writes for BBC radio. She lives in Kent, Wimbledon and Yorkshire. She has won numerous literary awards including the Whitbread Award, twice. She is mother of Tim Gardam, Principal of St Anne's College, Oxford. Jane has been awarded the Heywood Hill Literary Prize for a lifetime’s contribution to the enjoyment of literature and has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Her first book for adults, Black Faces, White Faces (1975), a collection of linked short stories about Jamaica, won both the David Higham Prize for Fiction and the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize. Subsequent collections of short stories include The Pangs of Love and Other Stories (1983), winner of the Katherine Mansfield Award; Going into a Dark House (1994), which was awarded the PEN/Macmillan Silver Pen Award (1995); and Missing the Midnight: Hauntings & Grotesques (1997).

Jane Gardam's first novel for adults, God on the Rocks (1978), a coming-of-age novel set in the 1930s, was adapted for television in 1992. It won the Prix Baudelaire (France) in 1989 and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction. Her other novels include The Queen of the Tambourine (1991), a haunting tale about a woman's fascination with a mysterious stranger, which won the Whitbread Novel Award; Faith Fox (1996), a portrait of England in the 1990s; and The Flight of the Maidens (2000), set just after the Second World War, which narrates the story of three Yorkshire schoolgirls on the brink of university and adult life. This book was adapted for BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour. In 1999 Jane Gardam was awarded the Heywood Hill Literary Prize in recognition of a distinguished literary career.

Her non-fiction includes a book about the Yorkshire of her childhood in The Iron Coast (1994), published with photographs by Peter Burton and Harland Walshaw.

She also writes for children and young adults. Her novel Bilgewater (1977), originally written for children, has now been re-classified as adult fiction. She was awarded the Whitbread Children's Book Award for The Hollow Land (1981) and is the author of A Few Fair Days (1971), a collection of short stories for children set on a Cumberland farm, and two novels for teenagers, A Long Way From Verona (1971), which explores a wartime childhood in Yorkshire, and The Summer After the Funeral (1973), a story about a loss of innocence after the death of a father.

Jane Gardam is a member of PEN and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She is married with three children and divides her time between East Kent and Yorkshire. (less)

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