Darkness and Ghosts

All Down Darkness Wide 

by Seán Hewitt

“There was desperation in his eyes. As he looked at me, it was as though he were looking into me from another world, trying to reach across some void, but everything he said was somehow falling short, not quite carrying its meaning across.”   ― Seán Hewitt, All Down Darkness Wide




This memoir is shaped by the story of a poet who writes of his friendship with a man whose unhappiness was causing him great suffering. In it, the author felt he had to prove "that I was good, that I was kind, that I followed the rules" while growing up in England in the 1990s and 2000s, despite the fact that he "was brought up vaguely Catholic" and "had a secret to keep." 

The mystery was that he came out as gay during a period when the Catholic Church was fighting a bill in Parliament that would have legalized equal marriage. That is only one of the numerous difficulties Hewitt writes about in this memorable memoir. Hewitt was reminded of Gerard Manley Hopkins, whose poem "The Lantern Out of Doors" serves as the title of this book, after his partner passed away while he was a student at the University of Cambridge. The memory of or experience of Hopkin's poetry permeates the narrative in a way that I have seldom encountered. That is a good thing.

I found this memoir to be a heartbreaking discourse on "ghosts" like Hopkins and the inability to achieve permanence. It is filled with beautiful scene after beautiful scene, from Hewitt's own father, who confided on his deathbed, "All I want is my boys," to a patient at the mental hospital who laments that his son never visits and remarks, "I knew you'd come." As long as I can continue to spend time with my boys and enjoy listening to the birds while I sit in the garden. I only want that. It is a deeply poignant reflection on mental illness, queer identity, and the transience of existence.