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Overview
In Children of Darkness and Light, Mosley takes on what for most novelists has been the most challenging of subjects: a novel directly concerned with religious belief. A middle-aged, burnt-out journalist is sent to the north of England to do a story about the possible appearance of the Blessed Virgin to a group of children, though this may be a rumor initiated by the government to cover up a nuclear disaster. Or both. Out of such conflicting possibilities, Mosley invents a sinister world where nothing is what it seems to be. And as Mosley's narrator moves through the possibilities of half-truths, lies, conspiracies, and betrayals, he himself creates a parallel crisis in his personal life wherein he and his wife are trying to destroy their marriage or save it, or - as we come to expect in Mosley novels - do both at once. And behind all this is the possibility that the narrator - half philosopher and half would-be saint - is little more than a middle-aged man trying to justify his irresponsibility and infidelity behind a shield of wit and irony.Synopsis
In Children of Darkness and Light, Mosley takes on what for most novelists has been the most challenging of subjects: a novel directly concerned with religious belief. A middle-aged, burnt-out journalist is sent to the north of England to do a story about the possible appearance of the Blessed Virgin to a group of children, though this may be a rumor initiated by the government to cover up a nuclear disaster. Or both. Out of such conflicting possibilities, Mosley invents a sinister world where nothing is what it seems to be. And as Mosley's narrator moves through the possibilities of half-truths, lies, conspiracies, and betrayals, he himself creates a parallel crisis in his personal life wherein he and his wife are trying to destroy their marriage or save it, or - as we come to expect in Mosley novels - do both at once. And behind all this is the possibility that the narrator - half philosopher and half would-be saint - is little more than a middle-aged man trying to justify his irresponsibility and infidelity behind a shield of wit and irony.
Publishers Weekly
"If we are to survive in the environment we have made for ourselves, may we have to be monstrous enough to greet our predicament?" The opening sentence of Mosley's Whitbread Award winner Hopeful Monsters is just as applicable to this alternately apocalyptic and redemptive novel. There are differences between the two books (aside from being shorter by half): the "hopeful monsters" here are children who have been exposed to radiation (intentionally and not), and Mosley replaces the earlier novel's gamut of Western philosophy with one religious, primarily Catholic, faith. Harry, an alcoholic journalist with family problems, once reported on the appearance of the Virgin Mary to children in wartorn former Yugoslavia. Now, several years later, his editor sends him to cover a commune of children in Cumbria who claim to have been instructed by another vision of Mary. On arriving, Harry begins to discover other connections: Gaby, the children's leader, is from Yugoslavia; there is a faulty nuclear reprocessing plant nearby that calls to mind the black-market trade in nuclear material he witnessed during his visit to Eastern Europe. Could it be, he begins to wonder, that these exposed children have mutated not into something horrifying but something new and wonderful? As ever, Mosley requires close reading. The dialogue is his usual Beckett-like loose interweaving of uncompleted thoughts and crossed conversations, and Mosley packs the pages with latent connections, ideas and references, particularly Christiana fisherman named Peter, for example; or Gaby and her accompanying identical triplets (the BVM and the three-who-are-one?). "No one puts new wine in old wineskins," Christ says in Mark. The creation of a new vessel for a new spirit is the essential message of this brilliant novel of devastation and hope. (Aug.)
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
"If we are to survive in the environment we have made for ourselves, may we have to be monstrous enough to greet our predicament?" The opening sentence of Mosley's Whitbread Award winner Hopeful Monsters is just as applicable to this alternately apocalyptic and redemptive novel. There are differences between the two books (aside from being shorter by half): the "hopeful monsters" here are children who have been exposed to radiation (intentionally and not), and Mosley replaces the earlier novel's gamut of Western philosophy with one religious, primarily Catholic, faith. Harry, an alcoholic journalist with family problems, once reported on the appearance of the Virgin Mary to children in wartorn former Yugoslavia. Now, several years later, his editor sends him to cover a commune of children in Cumbria who claim to have been instructed by another vision of Mary. On arriving, Harry begins to discover other connections: Gaby, the children's leader, is from Yugoslavia; there is a faulty nuclear reprocessing plant nearby that calls to mind the black-market trade in nuclear material he witnessed during his visit to Eastern Europe. Could it be, he begins to wonder, that these exposed children have mutated not into something horrifying but something new and wonderful? As ever, Mosley requires close reading. The dialogue is his usual Beckett-like loose interweaving of uncompleted thoughts and crossed conversations, and Mosley packs the pages with latent connections, ideas and references, particularly Christiana fisherman named Peter, for example; or Gaby and her accompanying identical triplets (the BVM and the three-who-are-one?). "No one puts new wine in old wineskins," Christ says in Mark. The creation of a new vessel for a new spirit is the essential message of this brilliant novel of devastation and hope. (Aug.)Library Journal
A hard-drinking, womanizing journalist is sent to cover a story about the possible sighting of the Virgin Mary by a group of children in the northern English town of Cumbria, also the site of a nuclear power plant. The story echoes to an earlier one he covered in Yugoslavia, where another sighting of the Virgin Mary occurred in an area of possible nuclear contamination. Plagued by a disintegrating marriage, an alienated son, and a foundering career, the reporter sets off to investigate the story. Cumbria turns out to be a very strange place. His arrival has been expected even though he hasn't phoned ahead. People don't seem to hear or understand him when he talks to them. A boy metamorphoses into a twin and then a triplet. Are these phenomena manifestations of faith or the effects of radioactivity? Best known for the Whitbread Prize-winning Hopeful Monsters (LJ 8/91), Mosley here offers a curious mix of spirituality and surrealism. For more adventurous readers.Barbara Love, Kingston P.L., Kingston, OntarioKirkus Reviews
A disturbingly prophetic vision of a contaminated near-future from the British writer whose dense and demanding fiction include Accident (1966) and the Whitbread Award-winning Hopeful Monsters (1991).It begins when Harry, a veteran journalist who has specialized in stories about catastrophes, travels from London to Cumbria (site of a nuclear power station) in northern England to write about the reported appearance of the Blessed Virgin to a group of children who seem to have formed a kind of adult-free commune. He suspects a red herring meant to deflect public attention from a nuclear accident, and finds what may be evidence of scientific experiments involving children. The story of Harry's own failing relationships with his suspicious wife and distracted young son adds a further dimension of uncertainty, as does Mosley's oddly—and often quite effectively—muted style, filled with rhetorical questions and abrupt changes of pace and emphasis. As Harry gradually elicits information from taciturn townspeople and the mysterious children themselves, he begins to doubt his very ability to absorb and process information. During a previous assignment, in Yugoslavia, he had, after being told of a similar religious vision, uncovered evidence of environmental contamination. Is the memory of that experience coloring his perception now? Or, perhaps more to the point, have the Cumbrian children's perceptions been altered by their exposure to radioactive particles? Unanswerable questions keep multiplying, in a complex, challenging narrative that thrusts Harry back and forth between past and present, his responsibilities as husband and father and his professional obligation to learn and tell the truth. A succession of biblical allusions (to the Cities of the Plain, Noah's Ark, Sodom and Gomorrah) and to Hieronymus Bosch's great painting The Garden of Earthly Delights are crucial building-blocks in this enigmatic novel's despairing revelations.
Reminiscent of Doris Lessing's The Four-Gated City, and a highly interesting addition to Mosley's somber studies of contemporary moral failure and looming future shock.