SOURCE: "Growing Up in Ireland's Shadowlands," in The Observer Review, August 25, 1996, p. 17.

In the following review, Devlin evaluates the narrative structure and style of Reading in the Dark, indicating the relation between stories and reality.

From the moment on the opening page of Reading in the Dark when the boy is stopped on the stairs by his mother, because a shadow has fallen between them, I was disarmed, though I had to wait 134 pages until the shadow surfaced again in its original context, in the tale 'Mother', before I understood that it was never possible to go straight at this thing that has fallen between them.

I am of the opinion that women and men have different strategies when it comes to telling stories—as with everything else. My favourite book of a haunting is Toni Morrison's Beloved—but not for Seamus Deane is Morrison's confrontational opening: '...