The Measure of Darkness

By Liam Durcan

Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction Winner
National Reading Group Month Great Group Reads” selection

A deft exploration of the heart and mind that offers the pathos of a Sam Shepard play nested within the unreliable storytelling of Christopher Nolan’s Memento.” Kirkus Reviews

Martin, an acclaimed architect, emerges from a coma after a roadside accident to find his world transformed: not only has the commission of a lifetime been taken from him, but his injury has left him with neglect syndrome, a loss of spatial awareness that has rendered him unfit to practice and unable to recognize the extent of his illness. Despite support from his formerly estranged brother and two grown daughters, his paranoia builds, alienating those closest to him. His only solace is found in the parallels he draws between himself and gifted Soviet-era architect Konstantin Melnikov, who survived Stalin’s disfavor by retreating into obscurity. As Martin retraces Melnikov’s life and his own fateful decisions, he becomes increasingly unsettled, until the discovery of the harrowing truth about the night of his accident hurtles him toward a deadly confrontation.

A gripping journey into the depths of a fractured mind, The Measure of Darkness is ultimately a resonant tale of resilience and healing.

Liam Durcan is the author of García’s Heart, winner of the Arthur Ellis Best First Novel Award. He lives in Montreal, Quebec, where he works as a neurologist at McGill University.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bellevue Literary Press
• Release date: Feb 22, 2016
• ISBN: 9781942658054

Book preview

Part I

I would like to see more clearly, but it seems to me that no one sees more clearly

—Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Prologue

It started with Martin recalling the surprise he’d felt when he first saw the house. He had expected to glimpse it from the end of the street, to have the luxury to appreciate it from a distance as he approached. But he hadn’t seen it coming. He just looked up and there they were, the professor and Martin, his assistant, in front of Konstantin Melnikov's house on Krivoarbatsky Lane. After the bustle of the early-morning markets at the Arbat, in the center of old Moscow, the atmosphere of Krivoarbatsky Lane was more suitably subdued, dour in a predictable, Soviet way that had obviously lulled him.

Melnikov House was like nothing else on the street. Like nothing else he’d ever seen. It was two interlocking cylinders—truncated towers, really—with rows of small hexagonal windows honeycombing across its white facade. Professor Lanctot put down the duffel bag that held the camera equipment, and together they stood, staring at the building. It was warm. Martin had been warned that Moscow’s spring weather was as unpredictable as Montreal’s; wet snow was not uncommon this late in April, the tail end of a winter snapping one last time on the city. It was a threat seemingly acknowledged on the face of every Muscovite they’d met in the last week. A grim refusal to be caught out in one’s hope. He looked over, to find Professor Lanctot attaching a lens to his camera, working quickly and silently, as though he were preparing to photograph an animal about to flee. Lanctot glanced at the light meter held in his outstretched hand.

Tripod? Martin said to Lanctot, doing his best to sound collaborative, having to settle for helpful.

Lanctot did not divert his gaze. Non. Merci.

They were supposed to have met an interpreter at the hotel, but they’d chosen instead to leave early in order to get out and see the Arbat without an official chaperone. Lanctot had left a message at the desk of the hotel, asking whoever was sent by the embassy to meet them at the house. All this struck Martin as unnecessarily risky, but he had discovered that Lanctot was a different man since their arrival in Moscow, transformed from one of the fussier academics in the School of Architecture to a scholarly James Bond, newly unflappable and surprisingly resourceful, a man given to suddenly revising plans, which, in turn, caused the cultural attachés at the embassy to throw up their hands. All it took to liberate him was a repressive regime. And a house here on Krivoarbatsky Lane.

The problem with Lanctot’s change in plan, of course, was that it meant no one was there to meet them; and without the bureaucratic approval—or the translation skills—of a government official, traipsing up the front walk and banging on the door was plainly out of the question. So they waited. After ten minutes, Lanctot collected his gear and gestured to Martin to follow to the other side of the building.

You have to see it from the north. You’ll see. Very impressive.

They walked together, wading through a yard overrun by a knee-high crop of nettles. He remembered the thrill of being there with Lanctot, even if he was little more than sidekick to a rogue scholar. He was twenty-two and traveling in Moscow, walking into the backyard of a house he’d already come to know, treading around the seminal work of an architect who had become mythic to him. They had spent the last ten days exploring the city, visiting and photographing Melnikov’s other Moscow works, the Rusakov Club in the Sokolniki District and what remained of the Leyland bus garage, but, perhaps out of a newfound sense of showmanship, Lanctot had decided to save the house for last. Or maybe it was that he wanted to walk through the Arbat along the way, to study the setting for Melnikov’s grand reorganization of the marketplace, which, like so many of the architect’s other plans, never came to fruition. Perhaps that was the lesson that needed to be learned before seeing the house.

Whatever Lanctot’s motives, the anticipation of seeing the structure was heightened by the promise of an audience with the great architect in his house. Konstantin Melnikov himself. This alone was worth the travel and the visas and the embassy’s having to vet their plans. Martin imagined tea with the architect and his wife in the caverns of the house, along with a vague expression of kinship and some sort of tearful recognition of how far they’d traveled. It embarrassed him now, but yes, he’d expected a measure of gratitude from Melnikov, along with the tea.

They maneuvered around to the back of the property, nestled more tightly between the neighboring houses than he would have expected. He tried to look at the house, the northern elevation, which Lanctot had found so worthy of special attention.

But something was wrong: He could not find the house. It seemed to be there and yet it had vanished. And then he looked at Lanctot, and Lanctot had no face. It was like studying the details of a dream. (He knew it was Lanctot simply because it could not have been anyone else, faceless there beside him, scrambling through the nettles).

Now he could summon only a remembered fragment from inside the Melnikov house, a curious sensation, not related to space or light at all—just the taste of tea, black tea without sugar, served to Lanctot and him as they sat in the main room for a wordless audience with the great man, who had eventually shepherded them in from his front yard, an act less of Russian hospitality than Soviet pragmatism, escorting them into his house and away from whatever surveillance they might have attracted. He remembered the tea. The formal pressure of a china cup’s rim against his lower lip. He remembered the house as beautiful, but this, he thought, must have been a memory, or an assumption, because he could not see it, could not recall the house in its entirety. Melnikov House had not vanished as much as dissolved in the difficulties of looking at it. Glare. Lens flare. Overexposure.

And now, more than thirty years after the visit, Martin found himself awakening in a different room—in a different world, really—both with their own relentlessly rectangular windows. He heard another patient across the hall cough. These were morning sounds. It must be morning. He tried to move, but his body objected in that now familiar twisting, visceral way. But none of that mattered. Until this moment, Martin had been unsure whether he could summon any detail of the house. Now he was certain that, in some vital way, it still existed in him. He was certain it would return in full.

Professor Lanctot had died ten years earlier, Melnikov had been dead more than thirty. But this amended memory lived. The memory announced itself to him there in the hospital bed. And thinking about all of this now, he felt he understood for the first time a pilgrim’s view of the world. Imperceptible truth. Beauty that escaped his ability to describe it. Faith.

Chapter 1

Concentrate on the linear. The linear is all you have.

Dr. Feingold had said it weeks ago. It was after a session—their last session, as it turned out—when she came to visit him, sneaking up on him in that way he suspected was at least partially deliberate. She sat down in a chair in the corner of the room. Martin listened to the deliberateness of a body’s weight being placed into one of those institutional chairs. The grudging rebuttal of the chair. He remembered searching for her, his focus rummaging through the shadows and joists of sunlight, until suddenly she was there.

It’s dark in here, he said, trying to position himself so that she would sit still in his field of vision.

The lighting is fine, Martin.

They spoke for a while, like they always did, in a way that managed to flatter and perplex him at the same time. She was intelligent. And attractive, he thought, although this impression came from nothing more than her voice, the therapeutic deliberateness in pronunciation, the change in pitch at the end of a sentence, which he suspected was professionally calculated, an allowance for him to say more than he initially wanted. Her voice reining him in and then giving him room.

His vision clutched at a sliver of reflected light that marked a looped earring. From there, he found an earlobe, then the tight ringlets of her hair. A long march toward Dr. Meredith Feingold began, the angle of her jaw that fed the chin and from there the French curve of her lower lip, followed from its fullness to where it tapered into a point. Trying to understand her eyes was a different matter; he was forever chasing something in the eyes that confused him, that made him arrive back at a starting point. Instead, he’d found himself focused on detached physical facts. The sound of her breathing. Blink rate. Vital signs. But it went beyond this; he was most drawn to the little wall of flesh that made up the arch of her nostril. While it was a nondescript region of only a couple of square centimeters, he’d recently been given to thinking about it quite incessantly, wondering whether this territory of Feingold had ever been pierced with a small metal stud when she was in university or kissed or even considered in passing by those who held her dear, if this beautiful structure had ever been subjected to the type of scrutiny that he’d given it—he viewed this as a sign that heralded recovery, because for the first time he could imagine Feingold in the past, as having a past, or as a person outside of her professional duties. A trail of her, the wake of a personality. These imaginings seemed to explain her better than her features, which, despite his obsessively cataloging them every time he saw her, could not be combined into anything resembling a recognizable face.

He looked forward to seeing her every day after physio- and occupational therapy. But other than his fractures, which were healing and were none of her concern anyway, he felt fine and couldn’t understand why she was so interested in his case. During their first visits, he was under the impression that she had been sent to help him deal with the aftermath of the accident, but he soon discovered, to his relief, that Dr. Feingold had no interest in talking about the psychic injuries the crash had inflicted. As for his memories of the accident itself, he had been wiped clean. No flashbacks or second-guessing in the moments leading up to the accident, just an amnestic void that stretched weeks before the impact. And while he was frustrated at having a gap in his life, at having no answer for the events leading up to the accident, he had recently understood that having no recollection meant being spared, both living through and reliving, the experience of the trauma. If he could not recall, it was not beyond him to at least imagine the terror of that moment of oncoming headlights, the panic that would come with swift imminence, the helplessness. On the occasion of their last meeting, in his room on the third floor of the Dunes Rehabilitation Center, on the outskirts of Burlington, Vermont, the conversation turned, as it always seemed to do, to his work. Feingold, famously—at the Dunes anyway—was from New York, and she was professionally vague about the reasons for her recent New England exile, leaving him to infer that it was part of some sort of exercise in relationship building (a partner trying to scrape out tenure in the classics department at the local university, he surmised). It had to be that; a move to a backwater rehab palace like the Dunes to further one’s own career would have been nothing more than poor judgment. It took no time to discover—even for someone staggering out of the debris field of his own brain injury—that, as a result of the move, Feingold was insatiably nostalgic for New York. She was forever wanting to know more about the buildings she had grown up with and had so loved, so he indulged her, and for hour after hour, in what was likely billed as psychotherapy, they talked about architecture. She would start with a building, asking him to tell her about it. Typical stuff, tourist stuff: the Chrysler, the Seagram, the Flatiron—the first thing he did there was correct her: The Flatiron was properly called the Fuller Building, he said, after the company that first built it and once resided there, and went on to describe his favorite characteristics of architect Daniel Burnham’s work, that sheer wall of limestone he had placed at the base of the Fuller. As he spoke to Feingold, Martin remembered taking his daughter Susan to see the wall, to touch it, on a trip to New York the summer before her last year of high school. She had been talking about her future—industrial-design studies or architecture—and he had wanted to take her to New York, he could admit now, to sway her decision. He felt that she needed to see the buildings, Burnham’s wall, up close. But it was also the summer after he and Sharon had separated, and the trip was mired in a wordless fog of recriminations that no amount of facade touching could hope to dispel. He doubted Susan would remember the trip or the building now, much less appreciate his motives.

He could feel the texture of the stone as he talked about the Fuller Building, the simplified lines rising from the fussy French Renaissance details of the building’s base. Those beautiful planes of limestone, he told Feingold, were pure Daniel Burnham, the Chicago architect who built it, a man whose work was felt to have lost its special flourishes after the death of his partner, John Wellborn Root. He told her he thought Burnham was better for the loss.

But on this last occasion, their conversation was different. He turned to Dr. Feingold when he heard himself talking, speaking digressively but saying nothing insightful, like a tour guide who could see the details of his day’s journey with his eyes closed. This thought made Martin stop, as though being patronized was something novel, an act that demanded to be appreciated in silence.

Go on, she said.

I’m tired. The light is bad.

Tell me what you think is wrong with you.

Boredom. Fluorescent lighting. I want to go. He watched her. She had been blinking every three to four seconds, gestures flaring a little more freely, the background noise of human movement turned up. Engaged Feingold. Maybe just caffeinated Feingold. And then he sensed her stiffening. If you ask me, my visual memory is impaired. I can’t hold things in my memory.

She asked him to imagine walking north up Fifth Avenue, which he immediately recognized was an excuse to get him to describe the Guggenheim. She asked what he could see, what he remembered, and he accepted the dare, giving her a nice little impromptu lecture about late-period Wright, even surprising himself with how well he could describe the building itself.

Then she asked him to visualize walking up past the museum, say to Ninetieth Street, and to turn and view Fifth Avenue looking toward the south. She asked him to tell her what he could see. It was as if he were in a different city, that he’d somehow gotten lost in the foliage of Central Park, trapped in a crowd of tourists on the steps of the Met. Where was the Guggenheim? she asked, and he told her he was lost, and lied, saying that he hadn’t been to New York recently, that he was working from memory. The Guggenheim is there, she said, but you’re not looking for it, which was preposterous to him. This is what we’ve been talking about; this is neglect, she said, trying to explain that he might never be the same.

Neglect. That curious word. A word she used to describe what the accident had done to him, taken from him. When he argued that he felt well, that he could feel himself becoming stronger, that perhaps the Dunes was a therapeutic place after all, she corrected him. She went over again how his right hemisphere had been contused in the accident and because of this he was not aware of his deficits; the key part of the deficit was not to be aware of its extent.

Feingold said that when he was looking south down Fifth Avenue, the Guggenheim was not just trapped in darkness; it had ceased to exist. He would never look for it, so he would never find it. He argued that it was his visual memory that was impaired, but Feingold said it wasn’t just the Guggenheim: Every morning he ate only what was on the right side of his plate, and did he notice that Szandor, the orderly, had to complete his shave every morning by removing a day's worth of stubble from the untouched left cheek?

He nodded, because there was really no way to argue with someone like Feingold. Feingold was power here. Instead, she explained that the nervous system did three things: It received and collated sensory information, created hypotheses about the world, and then tested these hypotheses. The accident had made him unable to ask questions about certain parts of his world. Neglect, she said, meant that the Guggenheim disappeared, and would keep disappearing, along with the East Side, along with everything to one side of him.

Martin told her he was tired, that he couldn’t concentrate, and tried to give the impression that he didn’t feel like talking about New York architecture if it was only going to be used to humiliate him in some way. But Feingold was not leaving.

I’m really exhausted, Dr. Feingold. It had come to that, he thought, appealing to her sympathy for reprieve. She just sat, unmoved.

I wanted to speak to you about the therapists’ opinion, she said.

Ah, the therapists. The Dunes was world-renowned for its therapist-to-patient ratio. It’s what got Brendan, his brother, to pay to have him assessed and air-ambulanced down here after he was discharged from the trauma ward of a hospital back in Montreal. Four months of therapists: speech and language, art and music, occupational and physio, earnest missionaries forever intent on rescuing an apostate like him from the baser pleasures of food or sleep, always dragging him off to one of their rooms forested with implements whose uses he could not fathom.

They’d had meetings, Feingold said. Multidisciplinary meetings. Social workers and the floor’s head nurse joining the fray every Tuesday and Friday morning.

He had come to realize the multidisciplinary discussions were the absolute highlights of the Dunes experience. He’d sat in on one a month before—a rare treat, and only at Feingold’s insistence—and found the event to have a tone that alternated between an old-time revival meeting and an intervention for some poor drug-addicted cousin, with representatives of the different disciplines occasionally bristling at the presence of rival expertise, all jostling for input, so much worked-up goodwill in the room that it demanded to be used on somebody. Multidisciplined. It meant they felt you were too far gone to really get better, to get normal. It meant that their efforts would be recast. Less search and rescue, more recovery of the body.

When he spoke to Feingold after that meeting, he asked her what the initial feelings were, even though it was obvious to him. Feingold said she doubted he would ever work again. She paused and qualified her statement: not work at the same level anyway.

Plateau was now in his lexicon. A word from the occupational therapists and the doctors, part of his geography of newly diminished expectations.

I think I know. But you still think I need more therapy.

"Well, with work you could be more functionally independent. You’ll need a supervised setting for a while. But with some modifications, we could

Reviews for The Measure of Darkness

[ebookreviewgal-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Martin Fallon wakes from a coma after an automobile accident only to find that he now suffers from a debilitating brain condition known as “spatial neglect syndrome”. Martin must accept that he can no longer continue life as the celebrated architect he was before his brain injury. He has no recollection of the accident and what led up to it. He grows increasingly agitated and paranoid as he attempts to piece his former life together. Martin is twice divorced and has little to do with his grown daughters, Susan and Norah. There is no one to care for Martin, so his brother Brendan decides to do it. Reconnecting with Brendan, the brother Martin has been estranged from for decades, forces them both to revisit some long ago wounds. Brendan is fighting some demons of his own. A long ago tour in Vietnam and the loss of his wife have contributed to some very embarrassing and self-destructive behaviors. The Measure of Darkness is a darkly depressing, sophisticated book. It’s a fairly short book, but it’s a complex and multi-layered one. I found it somewhat slow-moving at times. The author is careful to reveal bits and pieces of each character’s backstory as the book progresses, and he does it in no easy, breezy manner. You’ll have to work at staying with this book. While chapters written in Brendan’s POV are clear and straightforward, Martin’s meandering mind, particularly when comparing his life to that of famous Russian architect Konstantin Melnikov, was at times difficult for me to follow. This is a multifaceted story to be sure. One that certainly doesn’t just focus on the estranged brothers and a neurological condition. The author weaves a clever tapestry of controversy and political commentary, mainly geared toward American society. The effects of war and the (deliberate) decay and neglect of inner-city communities are front and center and it’s quite clear where the author most likely stands on these issues.This book is different from the books I usually choose, but I did enjoy it. If you’re looking for an upbeat and happy book you won’t find it here. If you’re looking for an intelligent book constructed of many layers that will make you think then I’d suggest getting a copy.

[scrabblenut · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Outstanding. This book spoke to me personally on so many levels. It is the story of Martin, an architect, who suffers a devastating brain injury when his car is hit by a snowplow one February night in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. The nature of the injury left him lacking insight into his condition, and thus unable to appreciate that he could only see things in his right field of vision, and things on the left just no longer existed for him, making the whole world seem crazy and hard to fathom. As he goes through rehab and starts to recover, his older brother, from whom he has been estranged for over 30 years, agrees to become his caregiver and take him back to his condo in Montreal to try to get his life back.The book unfolds a bit like a mystery. What was he doing on that road the night it happened? Why was he estranged from his brother and parents for so long? Why was he obsessed with a particular Russian architect? Why aren't his two daughters there for him in his time of need? This book is not an easy read, and the characters at times not very likable, but at all times very human and unforgettable. I did not really understand about the architecture except to realize it was central to the story and to Martin. When I finished the book, I looked up the Russian architect Melnikov and was astounded when I saw pictures of the house mentioned in the prologue, and it all made sense. I would suggest to anyone planning to read the book, to look this up before they start.I am grappling with the problem of lack of insight of someone in my own family with dementia, so this book has given ME some insight into what this would be like for the person experiencing it, as part of the book is told from Martin's point of view. The author is a neurologist so has obviously extensive knowledge of these types of brain injury. I have been a long-time fan of the books of Oliver Sacks, dealing with strange case histories.In another scene in the book, Martin remembers his visit with his family as a teenager to Expo '67 in Montreal. I made a similar visit there with my family when I was 15, and remember being amazed by all the pavilions and interesting architecture, as Martin was in the book. Also mentioned are draft dodgers coming to Canada, which made me recall my young quantum chemistry professor, who was a draft dodger. I was not expecting the book to feel so personal, which enhanced my enjoyment.I could not put this book down once I started, and finished it in two days. Highly recommended to people fascinated by the human condition.

[lynnb_64 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is the story of two brothers: Martin, an architect who has just suffered a brain injury leaving him unable to continue in his profession, and Brendan, a retired veterinarian who has arrived to care for Martin. Which is surprising, as they have been estranged for over 30 years.The novel takes place over a few days, with Martin leaving the rehabilitation centre against medical advice, and Brendan driving him back to his home in Montreal. We learn about the brothers' relationships with each other, and with their wives and children...all these relationships are in a fragile state for various reasons which the author unveils for us as we get to know Brendan and Martin. Mr. Durcan develops his characters well, and the family dynamics are rich with complexities and nuances...this is, I think, the strength of the book.Loss is a major theme in this book...loss of livelihood, of love, of family ties. The characters deal with loss in various ways, and a theme of self-protection also runs through the story.I was a little disappointed though, in the portrayal of Martin's brain injury. He has "neglect syndrome", which means he cannot perceive things on his left...and he doesn't even know there is something he isn't perceiving. I would have liked a clearer description of the disorder and how Martin was dealing with it. And, I agree with the reviewer (below) who thought some of the sentence structures were a bit convoluted. All in all, worth reading for the portrayal of family dynamics,and how those dynamics are affected by loss.

[dianeham · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I loved this book. The main character has a brain injury but part of the injury is that he is unaware of his limitations. He is unaware of half of his world but also unaware that he is missing anything. I could not put this book down until I finished it. The story works of many levels. Kudos.

[paulamc-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Thanks to Librarything and the publisher for a free copy of this book. The Measure of Darkness is described as "A gripping journey into the depths of a fractured mind". I couldn't agree more! Although I have read other books about characters with left neglect syndrome, this is the first time I felt like I truly understand what it must be like. The novel focusses on Martin, an architect recuperating from a serious car accident and his estranged brother, Brendan who reenters his life to help support him during his rehabilitation. Both brothers are flawed characters but Durcan manages to make them sympathetic. I liked his writing style as well. I found most of the novel hard to put down, the sections about the sixties (Expo and Detroit's black day in July) particularly fascinating. 4.5 stars

[julie10reads · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Measurement is crucial to the viability of an architectural design. If you are an architect who is unable to design, whether by order of a totalitarian regime or acquired brain injury, what is left to measure?A neurologist at McGill University in Montreal, Liam Durcan somehow finds time to frame multi-layered plots and intriguing characters in the context of architecture. THE MEASURE OF DARKNESS is his second novel, set to come out in March. I received an uncorrected proofs copy from LibraryThing on which I based this review.An unexplained car accident leaves influential architect Martin Fallon with “neglect syndrome”, an incapacitating loss of spatial awareness. His career in architecture is over, according to everyone but Martin. He checks himself out of rehab and with the aid of his formerly estranged brother, a retired veterinarian (Durcan sprinkles interesting insights into this industry throughout the novel), returns home to Montreal, to reclaim his position as head of his architectural firm. There he discovers what everyone else already knew: prior to the accident Martin had sold his interest in the business to his partners. Unable or unwilling to swallow this truth, Martin tries to untangle the sinister implications of this out of character decision and his suspicious roadside accident. While continuing to alienate his long-suffering brother and filmmaker daughter with his paranoia, Martin re-examines his opinions about Soviet era architect, Konstantin Melnikov, whom he once visited in Russia as a young man and the ground-breaking cylindrical house he built. Author Durcan leads the reader through many rooms in THE MEASURE OF DARKNESS to expose the elements of the complicated life of Martin Fallon--the family home in Detroit, his brother’s stint in Vietnam, his failed marriage and arrogant ambition, his mother’s dementia and his youthful dismissal of Konstantin’s seeming compliance with Stalin’s regime. That’s a lot to build in 250 pages. (Sidenote: Finally, a male author who knows the value of brevity!) Liam Durcan elegantly deploys his research in a psychological drama that speaks to how we construct ourselves through events expressed in relationships with those closest to us. Highly recommended to all!

[jbealy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Bellevue Literary Press is a small New York press that publishes books at that intersection where art meets science. They are a project of the New York University School of Medicine but they are not a university press per se, they operate independently. I can't say enough good about them and I encourage readers to find out more about the press and their authors.As to Liam Durcan's The Measure of Darkness, BLP has scored again. This is a smart page turner about Martin, an acclaimed architect, who has sustained a brain injury in a suspicious car accident. It is about struggle, perseverance, family. It is ultimately about choice, bravery and a call to be your true self. Liam Durcan is a doctor who has once again proved that he is also a writer.

[dawn1361 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"The Measure of Darkness" uses the imagery of darkness through every character. With well crafted prose Durcan leads us through Martin's discovery/recovery of a brain injury by exposing tangled relationships - brother, mother, children. His characters are easily engaged and have depth. It was only retrospectively that I acknowledge that the conclusion was the only obvious wrap-up. As Martin is pulled to the top of the building - as if being pulled from darkness into complete consciousness - the choice to plunge back into the comfort of darkness is the only option for him. I received my copy of this book through the Early Reviewer program.

[msbaba · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“The Measure of Darkness” by Liam Durcan is an intellectually engaging literary novel about two brothers who reunite in their late 60s after being estranged for their entire adult lives. They meet in a rehabilitation clinic where Martin Fallon, the younger brother, is recovering from a major auto accident that left him with a life-destabilizing neurological disorder called Neglect Syndrome. This is a spatial disorder defined by the inability of a person to process and perceive stimuli on one side of the body. Due to the disorder, Martin is dangerously blind to everything on his left side. He is unable to care for himself and now requires a full-time caregiver. Neither of Martin’s two ex-wives nor his daughters were willing to assume the burden. Interestingly, it is Martin’s estranged older brother, Brendan, who agrees to take on the day-to-day responsibility of Martin’s care. The last time the brothers were together was the late 1960s. Brendan was a young man leaving for a tour of duty as a soldier in Vietnam and Martin was a high school teenager privately harboring strong antiwar sentiments. Ultimately, Martin fled to Canada to avoid the draft. One brother chose duty and responsibility; the other chose ambition and self-actualization. The brother who fled, broke his parents’ hearts; the brother who served, came back psychologically wounded and unable to forgive his younger brother for abandoning the family and choosing his own needs above those of family and country.The main action of the book takes place over a very short period—perhaps a few weeks—after Martin and Brendan leave the rehabilitation clinic to begin life on their own. During this brief time the entire arc of the novel takes place: the reader becomes aware of the full extent of Martin’s deficits, including his complete inability to negotiate his own life; Martin discovers more and more about what happened to him immediately prior to the accident; the brothers discover more about each other’s past personal lives; and eventually, the two men try to uncover the history and psychology of their estrangement. Through this process, each makes separate stunning personal psychological discoveries that bring clarity to the past and present. The fact that Martin, the brother with Neglect Syndrome, was a successful architect prior to his injury means that this novel also has a great deal to do with architecture. What better way to help a reader understand Neglect Syndrome than to create a character whose entire career life depends on being able to negotiate the spatial world? In this novel, the life and architectural contributions of famous Russian architect, Konstantin Melnikov, are showcased. At times this emphasis on Melnikov may seem extraneous, but my advice is to bear with it because what you learn about Melnikov helps to clarify the whole.Besides being a highly skilled literary writer, the author is also a practicing neurologist. As a result, he was able to take his clinical experience with Neglect Syndrome and apply it artfully to Martin’s character development. The reader is able to get inside the character and actually feel what this disorder does to distort reality. In many respects, this is reason enough to read this book (particularly if one is interested in odd neurological disorders). This is an intellectually challenging, powerful, and complex novel. The writing is rich and strong, the pace is slow and thoughtful, and the subtlety, understatement, and academic details are demanding. It gets four stars because it could have benefited from better editing and pacing.(I am indebted to LibraryThing’s “First Read” program for giving me the opportunity to read an advanced readers copy of this book.)

[dianekeenoy · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It was difficult to get into this book at first. After taking the advice of one of the other reviewers to look up Konstantin Melnikov and to look at his house, things started to make a lot more sense. However, it wasn't until after I did that and made it to Chapter Six that I was finally able to settle into the story. Martin Fallon, an architect, is coming out of a coma after an accident. His estranged brother for 30 years, Brendan Fallon, is the only family member to come forward to take on the day-to-day care for his brother. Martin suffers from Neglect Syndrome which means he can't see anything on his left side. He also doesn't recognize this fact which makes it that much harder for him to figure out what's going on. There is a parallel story about Konstantin Melnikov, a gifted Soviet architect who is only allowed to practice for 10 years before his country takes away his license and he retreats into obscurity. As Martin retraces Milnikov's life and his own decisions, he becomes more and more unsettled as he starts to remember what happened the night of his accident.This book is about a lot of things; family, decisions and their aftermath, aging, death...etc. While this was a slow start, I am glad that I finished this book and appreciate receiving it as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program. I know that I will be thinking about this for awhile and may be back to change this to 4 stars.

[jenn.s · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I honestly did not enjoy reading this book. I gave it several attempts as I feel a book I struggle with might not present a struggle when read in a different frame of mind. For me it felt like there was a disconnection between the narrator and the reader which wasn't fully recovered when the point of view was altered. It became a chore to work through the book which I simply do not have time for. For those who have endless hours to dissect and digest what they are reading, it may well be rather enjoyable. I received an ARC through library thing in exchange for an honest review. This in no way influenced my opinion.

[alans_430515 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

When I started reading this book I thought it was the best written book I've ever received from earlyreviewers. The writing style was very clear and clean and the author expresses himself very well. I was very impressed by the fact that this was only the author's second novel and that he actually works as aneurologist(!)because I find his writing style to be so fine. But then I got stuck in the middle of the book and I found it difficult to pick up again. I finally did finish it and my final feelings is that the book moves in too many different directions ending up with a very confused plot.One of the other major problems withthe book is that the author seems to focused on the mental state of the main character, that I felt I waslearning more then I wanted to know. It got to the point that I didn't care about how he reacted to things.The secondary plot line about the Soviet architect was very, very interesting, but sometimes it seemed to move out of the principle focus of the book as the story dealt with the Vietnam war and relations of siblings. By the end of the book even a senile mother is introduced, for what purpose I wasn't sure. And then late on there is all these details about the city of Detroit, and I wasn't sure what the point of all of that was. It was interesting..but the book kept moving in far too many directions for me to feel totally comfortable with it. A lot of people comment on the "surprise" ending..the explanation for the accidentthat has happened to the main character Daniel, but this is dealt with so succinctly by the author thatit didn't seem to matter so much to me. I think the writer has a great prose style, I just wish the bookwas more tightly edited. Overall I think it went on longer than it probably should have.

[tracycampbell-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is the story of Martin, a former architect who wakes from a coma only to find that he has had a brain injury causing "neglect syndrome" - the loss of spatial awareness. He refuses to accept his condition and the result is that he becomes increasingly paranoid, agitated and clashes with all those around him. The story is quite slow and plodding and I found I just really did not like Martin at all, which made it very hard to remain interested in the book.

[countrylife_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Trying to put his life back together after a horrific accident in a snowstorm – his car parked on the side of the road no match for the snowplow – Martin’s is a battle with his brain, which has been left badly damaged. Once a successful architect in Montreal, he is now under the guardianship of his older brother, a retired veterinarian. This is a character driven story, driven by unlikeable characters, in unrelenting darkness of spirit - Martin’s past, Brendan’s past, their lives unconnected for decades. Martin’s life parallels the life he imagines of his Russian architect idol. I thought the author did a fine job portraying the life of a person suffering from the loss of spatial awareness called “neglect syndrome”, and with the architectural descriptions and settings. I found it well written and interesting, and I appreciated learning about this piece of a medical syndrome.

[terran_9 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Written by a neurologist, this book deals with the aftermath of an automobile accident in which Martin, a Canadian architect, can't come to terms with his loss of spatial awareness (neglect syndrome). His long-estranged brother is the only family member who supports Martin through his rehabilitation and return to "normal" life. It's hard to follow in parts when told from Martin's point of view, because he doesn't understand what is lacking from his vision, and is increasingly paranoid as the story proceeds.

[hubblegal-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was a very entertaining book about a man with “neglect syndrome”. The main character, Martin, wakes up from a coma to learn that he was in an accident and now suffers from “neglect syndrome” though he believes he’s fine. He literally can’t perceive half of his world but he doesn’t understand that. He’s shocked to learn that due to his disability, his architect license has been withdrawn and he can no longer work doing what he loves. Although his estranged brother and his own two daughters are supportive, Martin becomes more and more paranoid. He has such a hard time accepting his disability and the changes in his life. He relates his position to a Soviet architect who he had met once, Konstantin Melnikov. But as he looks more and more into both his past and the life of Konstantin Melnikov, his broken mind becomes even more confused. The author is a neurologist himself so this look at “neglect syndrome” rings true.This is a profound literary book that will cause you to think about it long after the last page. While this man had a specific physical condition, how often do we also plunge ahead with our lives not knowing things about our own lives, things that we can’t see or refuse to see? The author is an accomplished writer and the book is very well written. This book was given to me by the publisher through Edelweiss in return for an honest review.