Darling Jim: A Book Review

Before there were written words and novels, there were storytellers who wove tales of mystery and horror, of morality and sin and penance.

Christian Moerk takes a page from Ireland's traditions, using the character of the seanchai in his engaging novel. Darling Jim is a tale as bizarre as any that might be told before a peat fire on a long winter's night, in a time before television or radio intruded.

When a postman discovers a diary in the dead letter bin at the An Post office, he can't help but read it. The name of the woman who posted it had been in the papers, one of three women discovered dead in a house that dripped with blood.

From the start, the reader is snagged. Such a curious tale, one that hints at Stephen King's style, but there are no goblins or ghosts. The postman cracks open the notebook, and Fiona tells her story.

In contrast to the novel's opening chapters, with a description of a gory crime scene, the images that Fiona's diary reveal seem out of place. From horror, the narrative shifts to an ordinary town filled with dull people, but that same place is turned upside down when Jim arrives in the small rural town in Cork. He's sex on legs, a man so captivating that women are falling all over him, desperate to share their bed and competing with one another to catch Jim's wolf-like eye.

Like a seanchai of old, Jim is a spellbinding teller of sagas that feature wolves, fair maidens and brotherly betrayal. Mr. Moerk does a masterful job of linking the tale told in the pub with the action of the novel, in which three sisters and their aunt all vie for Jim's attentions.

The diary describes the downward descent into madness that results from jealousy, the emotions stoked by Jim as if he were baiting his prey. As Fiona concludes her version of events, scribbled down just before she died, there are still many unanswered questions, and Niall the postman sets off for west Cork to solve the riddle.

The middle section of the novel serves as a bridge, where Niall verifies all that he's learned from Fiona's last words. Like a knight, he's determined to do right by the three sisters, and he persists against those who would block his way. There's a second diary, he's learned, and he manages to get his hands on it in the rural village where the sisters once lived. This one was written by Fiona's sister Roisin with her last gasp of breath, the second half of a death-bed confession.

A fast-paced novel picks up speed as Roisin's version of events paints a more frightening picture of darling Jim. She is the one who explains why the sisters did what they did, interlinking Jim's fable about the man who became a wolf with the women's growing realization of what Jim really was.

As the novel winds down, Roisin lays out the final details of how she and her sisters came to be locked up by their aunt, and why they would all be found dead. Mr.Moerk delves into the mind of the deranged, and at the same time reveals the human habit of seeing what one wants to see. The evil that the three sisters uncover is not the least bit evident to all.

Still there are questions to be answered, and Niall persists in his quest, while the readers hang on every twist and turn of the plot. The author ties up all the loose ends as the novel closes, to provide a satisfying ending to a story that began as a rather gruesome offering.

To say more would be to give the ending away, and you'd not want that. Suffice it to say that there's three sisters, and only two were found dead in the house with their aunt.

Darling Jim is the perfect read for a dark summer night around the campfire, a cautionary tale told by a seanchai that would scare the pants off you. It is 285 pages of entertainment, creepy horror and enough plausibility to rope you in. Published by Henry Holt, you couldn't go wrong with this selection for a summer's lazy afternoon.