In 1979, on my thirteenth birthday, my favourite aunt took me to Shearer’s Bookshop in Gordon and told me I could buy whatever books I wanted as my birthday present. It was like being given the key to a chamber of magical treasures. I went slowly along the bookshelves, pulling out books whose titles caught my attention, studying their covers, and reading blurbs on the back.
One book I pulled out was The Dark is Rising. Its cover showed a man, with the head of a stag and the face of a bird of prey, galloping on a horse through a snowy landscape. The back read: ‘It will be a bad night,’ said Mr Dawson. ‘The Walker is abroad, and this night will be bad, and tomorrow will be beyond imagining.’
The words gave me that little shiver of apprehension and excitement that the best books always do. I saw it was part of a collection of five books, the others entitled Over Sea, Under Stone, Greenwitch, The Grey King and Silver on the Tree. Wonderful titles. Strange, rather creepy covers. Intriguing blurbs: ‘His helpers, a strange white-haired boy and a dog who can see the wind,’ said one. ‘When the Dark is rising — six shall turn it back,’ said another.
I piled the books in my arms. ‘Can I have these ones? Please?’ My aunt bit her lip, not having expected to buy that many books, looked down into my pleading face, then smiled and pulled out her wallet (each book cost her $2.75 — how times have changed!).
I read the five books in The Dark is Rising sequence one after another, that week of my thirteenth birthday, and they have haunted me ever since. Vivid and compelling, filled with brooding atmosphere and a strong sense of danger, the books are steeped in myth, mystery, and magic. It is the quality of the writing, though, that makes these books shine. They are filled with beauty. Over Sea, Under Stone, the first book, was published in 1965, the year before I was born, though I never thought it felt anything but fresh and contemporary. A family of three children — Simon, Jane and Barney Drew — holiday in Cornwall with their Uncle Merry. They find an old map in the attic that sets them on a quest for an ancient cup, which may even be the Holy Grail. At first just an amusement, the children soon find themselves caught up in peril and magic, part of which is the dawning realisation that their uncle is no ordinary man at all. The Dark is Rising, the second in the series, was written eight years later. In interviews, Susan Cooper said that she was on holiday in the snow-covered mountains when suddenly she knew, looking out on a whirling blizzard, that she was going to write a book about a boy who wakes up on his eleventh birthday and finds he can work magic.
She began work on the book but it was not coming to life for her until suddenly she realised it was thematically linked to her earlier novel. ‘It was like having pressed some magic key. I found there would be five books. I wrote down the titles of the next four books, and where they were going to be set and at what times of year, and very, very roughly who was going to be in each of them. And I wrote the last page of the last book and put it away’ (Susan Cooper, interview with Leonard S Marcus, The Wand in the Word: Conversations with Writers of Fantasy, Candlewick Press, 2006).
The five books chart the struggle between the forces of the Light and the forces of the Dark, but are set in our own world, with the heroes being ordinary children (like myself at the time), who need to make some very hard choices. I have read them so many times my copies are falling to pieces, stuck together with yellowing tape and stained with water and earth and leaves, from my habit of reading in the bath, at the beach, in a tree, in the garden. I have recently bought a new leather-bound collection of the books, signed by Susan Cooper — both old and new collections are among my greatest treasures.
In Dreams and Wishes: Essays on Writing for Children, Susan Cooper writes of a book of Walter de la Mare’s poems: ‘I’ve had my copy of this wonder for 30 years and must have turned to it at least as many times a year — sometimes for solace, sometimes for sunlight, always with an emotion that I have never quite been able to define. Come Hither is my talisman, my haunting: a distillation of the mysterious quality that sings out of all the books to which I’ve responded most deeply all my life — and that I dearly hope, as a writer, I might someday, somehow, be able to catch.’
This is how I feel about The Dark is Rising: it is my talisman, my touchstone, my yearning, my haunting.
About the Writer
Kate Forsyth wrote her first novel aged seven and has now sold more than a million books worldwide. Her most recent book, Beauty in Thorns, is a reimagining of Sleeping Beauty set amongst the passions and scandals of the Pre-Raphaelites. Other novels for adults include Bitter Greens, which won the 2015 American Library Association award for Best Historical Fiction; and The Wild Girl, which was named the Most Memorable Love Story of 2013. Kate’s fantasy series for children The Impossible Quest has been optioned for a film. Named one of Australia’s Favourite 15 Novelists, Kate has a BA in literature, a MA in creative writing and a doctorate in fairy tale studies, and is also an accredited master storyteller. You can read more about her at kateforsyth.com.au
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