The Blind Light: A Novel
The Blind Light is an ambitious and sprawling novel that, on the surface, explores the effects of living in the shadow of nuclear apocalypse for two very different British families. Underneath, it is a messy dive into fear, friendship, and family angst.
Beginning in the 1950s, the novel follows two men who become unlikely friends, Carter and Drummond. Carter is a privileged son of landowning heritage, and Drummond a working-class factory worker whose life revolves around union meetings and reading Marx. Bunking up together during their two-year stint of National Service at “Doomtown,” a training center that simulates the aftermath of a nuclear attack, Carter and Drum are each haunted by the prospect of nuclear war and make a pact that will have far-reaching consequences for them and their families.
It is an interesting setup that nevertheless fails to get off the ground. Stylistically, the prose is weighted with grating experimentation and short, staccato repetitions. Plot-wise, there are too many underdeveloped turning points. From the get-go, one never understands how these two disparate men are friends: Drum seems proud of his posh friend, whilst Carter is nothing more than a cipher with no interior life. Most maddeningly, an event halfway through the story triggers a devastating familial estrangement that appears utterly contrived, rendering the reader unsympathetic to the cascade of events that follow.
Where The Blind Light shines is in its emotional exploration of the cultural history of the bomb and the fear it seeded into the DNA of two generations; unfortunately, it misses the mark with excessive prose experimentation and generally flat, unlikable characters.
