I received a free copy of this book thanks to the publisher. All opinions are my own.
I hadn’t heard of Alice Chadwick’s debut novel when Biblioasis reached out to me but the description of Dark Like Under, along with that understated cover quickly appealed. The setting is England in the 1980s, an elite school in the English countryside. Set over a single day – from solar midnight to solar midnight – we follow students and staff in the aftermath of a sudden death.
We begin with an unexpected meeting in the middle of a Sunday night, through the routines of various students before arriving at school. Here they learn the shocking news and after this bomb has been dropped on them, staff and students are expected to continue on with their day. (I wondered if this was part of why the book was set in the 80s. Surely today, more support would be offered to these poor people?)
Aside from this there are the usual dramas of high school students everywhere, all the time. While some come from comfortable homes, others live more precariously. Some enter this school as their birthright, others have arrived almost at random by passing an important test. The students we follow are all the same age (I’m honestly never sure about the classes and levels in British schools but I would guess they’re around 16) and overlap frequently throughout the day, both in class and in each other’s homes. There is the sense of a small community, a somewhat stifling atmosphere, young adults who have known little else for most of their lives.
At the centre of this is the character of Thomasin, better known as Tin. She has a strange magnetism for students and even the teachers around her. She’s influential but holds herself back from almost everyone. There is an air to her of both tragedy and rebellion. At the beginning of the day Tin has had a break in relationship both with her boyfriend (is he her boyfriend?) and her closest friend. This breakage is reverberating throughout the school, just as the death also is.
There’s a lot here to like and Chadwick is a talented writer. But I do have two major complaints. First, there are two many characters. By the time everyone was introduced, I had lost track of who they all were. And while they were all well-drawn and interesting, they were not all needed for the plot of this story. Which brings me to my second complaint, being that there isn’t really a plot in this story. It’s a snapshot of a day, of a moment in time. And as such it’s powerful and evocative but it made for a slow read for me because there wasn’t much of an impetus to move forward. We know early on who dies so we’re left to follow these people through their day. This makes the book feel more like a broad strokes character study than a plotted novel.
As I said, Chadwick displays a lot of skill on the page and I would definitely read more from her in the future. I just want a little more oomph.
Karissa Reads Books 
If I read a snapshot novel with lots of characters, I want the book to read like brief scenes in a play. I want to know we’re going to get a small moment and that I’m moving away from it to a new one. Otherwise, I try to piece it together and make a full plot, which is unsatisfying.
Yeah, that’s almost what this book is but it’s not quite there. I’m not sure if it’s because the author wanted to do something else or because it’s a first novel and she needs to develop that skill more. I would read future work from her but I didn’t fall in love here.