A review by d_tod_davis
Darkness Visible by William Golding

2.0

2 1/2 Stars—Somewhere in here was a story worth telling. Golding teeters up to the edge of something compelling with an intriguing tangle of symbolism, religious mania, psychopathy, mysticism, and psychological complexity only to fail in pulling everything together in a satisfying way. As it is, it's a novel of two sections that should to come together in a third, but the narrative gears set in motion grind to a halt in that third section, and the denouement comes off as an afterthought. The thickly-written prose has some indelible imagery (the naked, burned child stumbling out of the flames of a bombed-out street during the Blitz in WWII chief among them), characters that are engaging to follow, and some intriguing narrative twists that keep the plot going. But ultimately, all the momentum of the first two thirds is undone and undermined by the last third where the reader follows secondary characters that stall the narrative for too long and with very little purpose. I can't help but think this could've been something better, more satisfying, something…more…in the end, but somewhere along the way, the story got away from Golding and he couldn't put it together.