Beyond Grey

"Susan Cooper's sequence of five children's stories, The Dark Is Rising, is, you'll have guessed, all about the dark. The dark as velvety, blanketing night. The dark as the keeper of mysteries, ineffable and unknowable. Above all, the dark as counterpoint to the light; as one side of the great battle between evil and good.
     The Dark Is Rising is a Christmas ritual for me. The story starts on 20 December, and it is on 20 December each year that I start reading it. It is the night before Will Stanton's 11th birthday. All is happy anticipation and the busy, noisy stuff of a family coming together for the Christmas holiday. Will goes to bed with not much on his mind except a hope that his dearest birthday wish might be granted: deep, white, enfolding snow. He puts out the light. And then the terror comes."
— Charlotte Higgins, The Guardian
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