Book of the Week

A Bright Ray of Darkness by Ethan Hawke

Recommended by Mr Pirrie

Ethan Hawke? A novelist? Loved him in Training Day and Dead Poets’ Society but, as his actor’s mugshot stared at me from the hardback cover, I couldn’t help feeling that maybe this was a bad idea…

William Harding, a successful film star is plunged into a blizzard of negative press after the paparazzi splash an affair he has had - whilst filming in South Africa - all over the front pages and the internet. To make matters worse, everyone - from airport taxi drivers to hotel receptionists to strangers in Times Square - loves his rockstar wife and sides with her in this very public divorce: she appears on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine with the headline “Would you cheat on this woman?”

Harding has little choice but to accept his fate and begin a journey of self-discovery. Instead of putting the book down at this point I realised that I was rather compelled by this young man’s fragility and narcissism. Hawke has created a character in the narrator Harding who, for all his selfishness and introspection, is entirely likeable. Having accepted a job on Broadway to play Hotspur in Shakespeare’s Henry the Fourth Part I, the novel begins with the first day of rehearsals and ends with the last night of the six month run. If his public persona is taking a hammering from the public divorce, his professional reputation is now on the line as he makes his Broadway debut as the movie star surrounded by bona fide stage actors.

Ethan Hawke playing Hotspur, with Audra McDonald as Lady Hotspur, in Henry IV Parts I and II at the Lincoln Center in 2003

More than a novel about a spoiled movie star dealing with a mess of his own making, A Bright Ray of Darkness is really a novel about the theatre. And an excellent one at that too; I can’t think of a novel that describes the life of a professional actor during the long run of a play better. Hawke captures the silence of the audience, the energy onstage, the bluster backstage, the intensity of the working relationships, the sheer fun and nobility and rigour of it all, with precision, candour and humour. All the while as Harding wallows in his own self-pity, desperately hoping his wife will turn up at any performance.

Whether or not the theatre heals our protagonist or enlightens him is not for me to say. Hawke has written a novel that is firmly rooted in the world of the theatre; a story about the hope of being a better, kinder person. I, for one, have resolved never to judge a book by a mugshot again.

Ethan Hawke's cover mugshot: don't let it put you off!