Published by Bloomsbury Publishing on August 1, 2023
In the heat of an argument, Les hates Marlene, knowing that he will wake up the next day and “see his wife through the wound and rot of loss.” Their marriage has had many reasons to fall apart, not the least Les’ insistence on working on a trawler as a scalloper, a job that keeps him away from home weeks at a time during the summer. Yet they remain together.
Understandably, Les and Marlene aren’t dealing well with the loss of their daughter. Most marriages are torn apart when a child dies. Walk the Darkness Down suggests why that might happen and how it might not.
On the trawler, Les is self-loathing. He enjoys the pain when he opens scallops by digging the sharp shells into his stomach. When Marlene interacts with his crew members at a party, she can’t understand why Les prefers their company to hers. Working on the trawler after the party, Les can’t understand why he became the kind of man who would frighten his godson, the child of another crew member.
When Les is at sea, Marlene brings hookers home to her apartment, cleans them up, feeds them, and lets them enjoy an evening of comfort. The hookers are managed (pimped) by a man named Bill. He knows about Marlene but she pays for their time so he’s content, provided the hookers return to him.
Marlene thinks she uses the hooker visits as a distraction from pain. Perhaps she is trying to replace the daughter she lost. Perhaps she wants someone to rely on her. Perhaps she wants to save someone because she couldn't save her daughter. At the novel’s end, Daniel Magariel violates the rule against showing rather than telling by explaining Marlene’s true motivation, or at least the one she has settled upon to explain her unlikely behavior.
The novel’s first turning point arrives when Marlene realizes that a hooker named Josie needs her help and that helping Josie will be impossible unless she changes her own life. Only later does Marlene learn that Les has knowledge of Josie that Marlene has not discovered. Will helping Josie save or destroy their marriage?
Despite its concluding sense of optimism, Walk the Darkness Down is grittier than most domestic dramas. The death of their child has isolated Marlene and Les from each other, forcing them into their separate realities when they need each other the most. “You’ve got to abide with your darkness” a character learned from her grandmother. Les and Marlene are living in dark places and struggling to fight their way toward a dim light. Marlene is “a fitful puppet of her own petulance.” Les takes out his anger on members of his crew. The death of their child caused not just heartache but unwarranted blame and resentment. Why and how the daughter died — why Les and Marlene refuse to drive on the driveway of their former home — is tragic.
Magariel’s detailed descriptions of scalloping on a trawler add interest and realism to the story as well as tension when a storm threatens. The crew members are like a second family to Les, maybe a more important family than the one he has. They contribute family drama of their own to the plot. That drama grows with each trip to the sea, eventually giving the story its most vivid moments.
Magariel’s prose is precise and expressive, but there are times when his dialog doesn’t ring true. Characters who deliver significant monologs all speak in the same voice. People in Bill’s line of work can be surprisingly lyrical, but Bill’s prose doesn’t capture the language of the street. Les gives a lengthy, rather eloquent speech to his wife about his feelings as their marriage nears a breaking point. Nothing in the description of Les prior to that point suggests he’s capable of expressing those thoughts with such nuance, even if he suddenly learned to gain insight from introspection. An interior monologue near the end also gives the impression of having been written for Les rather than being the product of his own mind.
Still, it’s nice to imagine that a brooding man might have an epiphany that opens him to insightful and healing discussions. The story’s grittiness complements its softness. Les and Marlene each recognize their harshness. They want to be more caring toward each other, if only they can figure out how. Walk the Darkness Down has more than a few genuinely moving moments. The ending suggests that marriages on their way to destruction might be saved. Les and Marlene debate whether love is enough. That’s an unanswerable question, but the novel confronts it without flinching. Readers might debate whether the story and its ending are credible, but any doubts about the plot are easily overcome by the depth of Magariel’s troubled characters and his robust prose.
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