Review: We All Ran into the Sunlight

I am not a shill. I am not a shill! In reviewing We All Ran into the Sunlight, the debut novel from one Natalie Young, who justhappens to be Prospect's Arts and Books editor, I shall say with all honesty that I like it very much. Also, that I am not a shill. Have I written that often enough now?

Appropriately enough, doubts play a major role for Young's story: for one character, there are the “doubts that sink to the silt in her mind.” Each character navigates their own doubts and assumptions in a strange, sad story tied together by one large house.

Sunlight tells the tales of two rather different families, separated by a half-century of modern history. A British couple embed themselves in French village life in an effort to escape their hectic London existence. Inevitably, they have brought with them more than their luggage: many of their problems (marital and emotional) are to find fresh expression in their chosen corner of laFrance profonde. Kate Glover, to the consternation of her husband Stephen, develops an obsession with the history of the dilapidated château that lies at the heart of the village they are staying in. And, as we learn even in the first pages of the novel, the familial story behind the derelict château is a nasty one.



Comparisons to Rebecca, as the quintessential Gothic Romance, have been plentiful. Personally, I'm not sure that "Gothic" would be the most apt description for Young's book. Certainly, this is a tale riddled with dark family secrets, psychological warfare and the effects of acute social displacement—and luckily Young has achieved a stylistic control similar to that of du Maurier. Satisfyingly, things happen in this book. It is plot-led without veering into linear simplicity; it is stylistically self-conscious without descending into ostentatious literariness.

It is possible that Young's style will not be to everybody's tastes. I like it a lot. She tends toward shorter sentences, layering imagery and description into a really complete sense of place. Some of the best descriptions are the briefest, and most incidental—at night, we emerge into “the dark hiss of the garden”; Stephen always puts his shoes “beside the door, facing, as always, into the room; ready for action.” One character sweats “as if his crown had been pressed with the tip of an iron.” The prose is spare, but we are always made aware of the temperature, the state of the sun, the taste of the food.

We are invited to bathe in these textures as Young softly, sadly unfolds her narrative. It's a perfect companion for some unexpectedly warm spring evenings.