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"We were running flat out. The opening was dazzling. The middle was dazzling. It was like a steeplechase composed entirely of hurdles.
But that would not be a steeplechase at all. It would be more like a steep, steep climb.
They were shouting, Tell it, big momma, tell it. I mean, the child is only six years old.
Do I need to stylize it, then, or can I tell it as it was?"

Seemingly, this opening of Pitch Dark is telling and foretelling about an adult love relationship. However, Adler tucks in the child of six years old. What are we to make of it? She even seems to ask permission if she can slip past her requirements as a writer; a reporter, novelist, as though the form and act of writing distances her from reality. Is it O.K. to tell it as it was?

Speed Boat, her previous novel, which Proustitute so rightly suggests to read initially and in conjunction with Pitch Dark, utilizes her effective style of fragmentation and articulate concision to report on the hypocrisies and surface cloaked meaninglessness of her contemporaries, as well as glimpses of herself

Pitch Dark is a large moaning leap into the battleground of Renata Adler's interior strewn with blood of amputated limbs, hearts abandoned still pulsing, thoughts rushing through the crammed sentences of a frightened mortal mind. Using her fragmented and articulate style she now whispers brief compelling stories, produces repetitions, offers bits of confounding thought urging the reader on in the narrative and further on into her mind. She has eschewed writing for telling us as it was, placing us there with her as she battles her demons, discovers herself, as we are doing the same.

The style bears a taut tension for her and we the reader who no longer read but share a consciousness, a difficult consciousness straining beneath the weight of what is desired but also feared. A consciousness similar to all of ours but also imprinted in its on specialized cast.

The initial of three parts-Please read, Proustitoute's and Brian Dice's fine reviews of this book- the first person female narrator retells the history of her relationship with a married lover of a number of years, shifting us in time. She is alone but missing him, wanting him. What is love for her? Can she love? She sees that something that has been there over time may be there because it is dying, is dead. If it is dead it is not love. She spies on the huge questions now surfacing, dominating her life; the off-on again distance of her relationship with her lover has her ruminating on whether veering any closer despite her wishes and dreams might combust in a dissimulation of herself she may never recover from. Can she exist within a relationship outside all the self-delusions, and still be herself? Will she necessarily be absorbed and within that context no longer exist? Can she exist alone, a separate entity with her paralyzing conflicts and fears?

She is in Ireland, alone, driving a rental car of a circumspect nature trying to find Dublin (Home? Home of herself?) It is getting dark, Then darker, rain misting. She is lost. Has she passed the turnoff? If so she must go back. However if she has not and does go back there will be that much further to go. It is darker and few if any cars on the road. She waves down a large truck asking the driver for help. Suspicious of the look he gives her still she chooses to follow him as he offered. Driving behind him she believes she has done something wrong concerning the rental car and the authorities may be looking for her. The truck driver may well be leading her in the opposite direction of Dublin. What to do?

If on her own what she locates is piercing thorns of paranoia and helplessness. No one cares about her, or outright would like to do her harm. This is a dangerous and claustrophobic world she hurtles into as she enters the pitch dark of her wavered and wounded mind, relentless in finding means of supporting its own beliefs. In the pitch dark of herself and the world she has created she is truly frightened. She has a right to be frightened.

The final section, Home, has the reader rooting for her, if that is possible, if there is time. It is so simple to be lost in the the writing's beauty of precision, its burning and burnt passion, the profound and courageous intellect of the author. You will have to read the book to find out what happens to her, of what she may or may not make happen, what we may or may not make happen for ourselves. As in all 5 star works there is wisdom, then left with a yearning for more, a taste we do not want to relinquish. Adler has also given us a unique style honed to the sheerness of beauty, sentences to lavish in, thoughts to relish. I am so glad that I have read this book, its enjoyment and challenges and its mirror held up for all to see themselves, if they so wish. Also, the gratitude that Speedboat, Pitch Dark, was reprinted and made available. The world would be lesser without its contributions. This may mean that readers such as ourselves are being heard and if nothing else making it worth a publisher's effort to reprint great works which might otherwise slip into oblivion. A new club? Keeping Authors From Burial to complement the already so valuable GR's, Buried Authors?

PS: I just wanted to thank you. I love talking about the books that I read, and believe there is someone listening. There is no other place I can do this. Whether what I write is agreed with or other, it is the community of book-interested people, all ages, all countries, connected through literature, that is so important. Completing this review reminded me how grateful I am.