Posted at:
http://web.mac.com/ann163125/Table_Talk/Table_Talk_Blog/Entries/2008/4/26_A_Dark...
A Dark Enchantment is Roland Vernon’s first novel and the inaugural winner of the Daily Mail First Novel Award. Set in Greece in 1869, it tells the story of Godwin Tudor, a young man at odds with his life in England, who finds himself bullied into visiting the enigmatic and, quite frankly, unbalanced, Edgar Brooks in his home on the island of Pyroxenia. Once there, Tudor discovers a countryside that belongs very much to the Greece of earlier times, peopled by both peasants and bandits all of whom look up to Brooks as not only the local landowner but also the best type of Lord of the Manor, that is one who recognises his responsibilities towards the local populous and does his best to ensure that they are educated and tended in respect of their health. Tudor is bemused by the situation he encounters, the more so because of Brooks’ sixteen year old daughter, Lydia. She enchants all who met her but is either excessively unaware of her power or deliberately making use of it. While aware of the capriciousness of her nature, he is soon in love with her and unable to stand against anything she wants.
Gradually, the young Englishman begins to understand the way in which Brooks’ mind works and why the landowner stands so firmly against a mining company setting up operations on his property that he is prepared to break the law in a most spectacular manner to prevent it. It is the results of this stand against the ‘progress’ championed by both the authorities and his son, that form the main part of the novel. Vernon explores the way in which government agencies and the people who wield the money were as capable of double cross then as now in an attempt to get what they want. Tudor finds that integrity comes a poor second to expediency even when men’s lives are at stake and the message that government agents are not to be trusted comes over loud and clear.
Vernon has clearly done a great deal of research in the course of writing this novel and he draws a vivid picture of the people and country-side with which he is concerned. If I could find fault with the telling it would be that he perhaps includes too much of this. The book could stand to lose fifty or so pages and would gain, I think, a greater tension as a result. However, I enjoyed this first novel and will look out for more.