#BookReview-‘The Light In The Dark’ by Horatio Clare

About the book…

As November stubs out the glow of autumn and the days tighten into shorter hours, winter’s occupation begins. Preparing for winter has its own rhythms, as old as our exchanges with the land. Of all the seasons, it draws us together.

But winter can be tough. It is a time of introspection, of looking inwards. Seasonal sadness; winter blues; depression – such feelings are widespread in the darker months. But by looking outwards, by being in and observing nature, we can appreciate its rhythms.

Mountains make sense in any weather. The voices of a wood always speak consolation. A brush of frost; subtle colours; days as bright as a magpie’s cackle. We can learn to see and celebrate winter in all its shadows and lights.

In this moving and lyrical evocation of a British winter and the feelings it inspires, Horatio Clare raises a torch against the darkness, illuminating the blackest corners of the season, and delving into memory and myth to explore the powerful hold that winter has on us.

By learning to see, we can find the magic, the light that burns bright at the heart of winter: spring will come again

My thanks to Lovereading for the book review invite as part of their Book Buzz Ambassadors. ‘The Light In The Dark’ by Horatio Clare is published by Elliott and Thomson LTD on 01/11/2019 in hardback and ebook formats.

”In turmoil we are drawn to water,to space,to the high places and the wider views.It must be a very simple reflex:a need for escpae and perspective which weather and landscape fulfil.The sea has a power to draw out and rearrange our anxieties in simpler patterns;on the coast paths and the empty beaches I found a deep untangling.There is this in winter,too,in its reductions and parings,simplicity.”

This is an incredibly intimate, and forthright memoir, as Horatio takes the reader through the season of winter, aiming to find the beauty and worth in a time that causes him a depressive state. Seasonal Affective Disorder or SAD is a debilitating condition with lots of associated mental and physical symptoms which affects not only the author’s perception of life, but also the natural world that he quite clearly loves. His hopes, laid out at the start of the memoir, are to keep a journal from October through to March, partly to recognise his triggers and partly to record his observations of the change from autumn to winter then back to spring.

”Winter as a moaning,dripping spectre,a ghost untombed ,unhoused and the swedes as a treasure hoard, transfiguring winter’s spirit with an epiphany of colour,texture and accumulation;what attention,what strength of soul,to catch the uplifting moment.”

It is painfully honest and interspersed with poems and vignettes on the farm life that he grew up in, are snippets of his family life, writing life and his state of mind. It is beautiful yet bleak, resplendent in his appreciation of nature despite what it does to him mentally and totally shows his love for his family, clearly the thing which is both spurring him to both get help and tackle this pervasive condition.

”The struggle is intensifying.It is like being sealed into a grey snowball which keeps gathering defeats.However much i wash,I seem to smell of dirty winter trains and exhaust.”

His observations are astutue and lyrical, it feels strange to say that on finishing this book I felt joyful because to the casual reader it could look like a bleak book, with a potential subheading of ‘why I hate winter.’ It could not be more opporite, in this journal,Horatio is trying to unpack his memories, find his joy and imrpove life not just for him, but also his family. He goes to his GP and asks for help, he seeks therapy and takes advice on board as well as asking for it. It is wonderful that he details this, there is no sense in him being ‘a failure’ in the slightest, I thoroughly applaud his action to seek support rather than muddle through, there is never anything wrong with this. And I think in times when masculinity is seen as ‘fragile’ , being told to ‘man up’ for the sake of your sex, to uphold widely held ‘masculine values’ ,this is so needed.

As someone who suffers from summer SAD and who longs for that first whiff of autumn on the breeze,I was intrigued to read a book about finding the joy of winter when you hate it, it actually gave me something to look forward to and rejoice in the midst of a heatwave, followed by an Indian summer, which has left me feeling low and vulnerable. It also aided me to understand how and why SAD works in winter and how to support those who have it, as well as recommending appropriate causes of action to seek support and advice.

What he finds is that it is not so much bringing light out of the shadows, as his winter time focus,it is more on what the light illuminates. This is particularly significant for those with SAD as the lack of direct sunlight has such a detrimental affect on mood.

It is an intriguing nature based memoir that made an afternoon just fly by, and before you know it, you were reading the afterword and moaning ‘Aw!’ very quietly , so that the dog doesn’t jump on you and lick your face to pieces, as he has a habit of doing if you express dismay too loudly He’s lovely but thinks he is much littler than a full grown springer and slobbers. A lot).

Highly recommended, I learnt a lot about farming, bird migration and folklore as well as finding a new writer whose works I absolutely need to read. Recommended for lovers of Matt Haig

About the author…

Horatio Clare (b. 1973) is a writer, radio producer and journalist. Born in London, he and his brother Alexander grew up on a hill farm in the Black Mountains of south Wales. Clare describes the experience in his first book ‘Running For The Hills’(John Murray 2006) in which he sets out to trace the course and causes of his parents divorce, and recalls the eccentric, romantic and often harsh conditions of his childhood. The book was widely and favourably reviewed in the UK, where it became a bestseller, as in the US.

‘Running for the Hills’ was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award and shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. Horatio has written about Ethiopia, Namibia and Morocco, and now divides his time between South Wales, Lancashire and London. He was awarded a Somerset Maugham Award for the writing of ‘A Single Swallow’(Chatto and Windus, 2009).

Links-https://www.newwelshreview.com/article.php?id=208

Twitter @HoratioClare

@eandtbooks

@LoveReadinguk