You probably don’t want to read John William’s “Nothing but the night” if you are in any way depressed. Or feeling overwhelmed. Or existential. It won’t help lift your mood.
Nor if you’re looking for a happy ending. Williams dangles one before us, tantalisingly suggesting redemption, then in the last 20 pages rips that possibility away from us. And if we’re honest, we knew he was going to…
In many ways you can tell this is a first novel, largely because it is over-written in some places. But the quality is clearly there in its 117 pages. My issue is an ‘nyrb classic’, picked up for a snip in the remainders section of a UK Waterstones. At the end of the novel is the text of an interview with Williams’ widow, Nancy; worth reading to understand the genesis of this 1948-written debut.
Ian Gouge - Writer 