... a rapturous account of his years with a boyfriend who suffered from suicidal depression ... Woven into this portrait of depression’s maelstrom is the author’s own queer coming-of-age. Of his abandoned Catholicism, Hewitt confesses that 'the shape of myself was molded by it, the routines of my body colored by its sounds and movements, the imagery of my mind rinsed with it,' and to our benefit; even his depictions of cruising have a holy aura. As a dedicated nonfiction writer, I sometimes meet poets’ memoirs with a caginess that is utterly disgraced by a book like this, whose structure is nearly as immaculate as its sentences. Near the book’s end, the lovers collaborate on a poetic translation and work to 'piece together a voice in the space between us.' Writing is always an act of translation, and Hewitt beautifully illuminates his own darknesses so that we might also see our own.
The contradictions of Seán Hewitt’s memoir are no less intense, but less readily apparent...The author of a 2020 poetry collection, Tongues of Fire, and of an academic study of the Irish playwright J. M. Synge, Hewitt would not seem at first glance to be someone in peril...But his thoughtful and often exquisitely written memoir is both a gay coming-of-age and an exploration of the mental health crises affecting the LGBTQ community...More specifically, it is the story of his long-term partner Elias’s suicidal depression, of the toll this illness took on Hewitt, and of the revelations that it spurred...The dramas in this book, like the sentences, are less pyrotechnic than those of Asturias or Kochai, but they lack neither energy nor significance...The memoir at its core is about Hewitt’s relationship with Elias, starting with their meeting in Colombia, where both men are traveling alone...Elias is Swedish, and once Hewitt returns to the United Kingdom, their relationship seems destined to be long-distance, until they move in together: first in Liverpool, where Hewitt pursues a graduate degree, and subsequently in Gothenburg...Though a study of despair, the memoir is not despairing: through their poetry, Hopkins and Boye offer inspiration to Hewitt, also a poet...Considering queer lives, 'both of them hoped—one with certainty, one with longing—that there would be a place for those people, a friend to watch them, a room with their name above the lintel.'
... some of the most beautiful prose I’ve read in years... This is not a break-up memoir, however...This intensely original memoir’s real subject is what appears to Hewitt, in the aftermath of these relationships, as a thread that connects these men to each other, and to himself—'a sort of curse, a brokenness in them, in us' ... Hewitt closes here, trying to imagine how he might invite this original self back into his life. He doesn’t say if he succeeds, but perhaps that will be this memoir’s sequel. It’s the one I’ll hope for, at least.
Hewitt’s book is excellent ... Hewitt’s prose illustrates his grounding in poetry. There is such a casual beauty to his images and metaphors that this reads less like words on a page and closer to torrents of water washing over you. This is not the spare, sparse prose of Hewitt’s novelist contemporaries, but is a robust and mellifluous text that feels joyous to read ... These days seemingly everyone has a memoir of some description — tweeters, former Love Islanders, fictional characters — so I’ve found it can be productive to ask two questions of each new offering: why does this exist, and why should I care? Hewitt convincingly answers both questions, as his book is an important addition to the heartbreak genre that offers a modern perspective now surprisingly rarely seen — that of a man. It is refreshing to be presented with a book that explores heartbreak and meditates on the meaning of relationships with such emotional openness and vulnerability from a male perspective ... In Tongues of Fire Hewitt proved himself to be one of Ireland’s foremost poets. In All Down Darkness Wide he shows himself to be one of our foremost memoirists too. A stunning meditation on love and heartbreak, this feels like an essential work of the new Irish queer canon. Let us hope it is but a first volume, the beginning of a vast work.
... extraordinary ... [Hewitt] remembers 'Jack' (the names in the book have been changed) with warmth and in such idiosyncratic detail that it makes you feel you have met him yourself--you can picture the daredevil flirtatiousness, bookishness and beauty ... Again, Hewitt pulls the reader in, knows how to charm. He is, before and after everything else, a romantic ... it is striking how, expelled from their context, Hopkins’s words have a disordered intensity, as if coming apart at the seams of thought or written in a second language. This will turn out to be fitting ... Hewitt’s efforts to boost Elias expose the limits of language itself ... He is very good on Sweden’s seasonal darkness and how it impinges ... does not offer glib consolations and is all the more powerful and affecting for that. It is about coming out in the widest sense – and that includes the outing of depression. It is about the disinterring, too, of the fears of his younger self. And while it adheres to faith of a kind, the stability of belief is not always available to Hewitt, a former Catholic – any more than it was to Hopkins.
Hewitt’s paranoia about leaving Elias alone even briefly – 'How could I keep him safe?' – vibrates off the page ... Queer artists who dwell on their own suffering are often accused of unhelpfully figuring homosexuality as a kind of trauma. But throughout this troubled period, engaging with poetry galvanises Hewitt and leavens the text. Together, the two men informally translate the work of Swedish writer Karin Boye. They throw themselves wholeheartedly into this task of creating something new together. Hewitt captures the process vividly, emphasising both its slipperiness and its all-consuming quality ... Hewitt’s introspections take him towards a place of self-acceptance, a partial reconciliation with what he has endured. It would be inaccurate to suggest the story is ultimately redemptive. As the memoir proceeds, however, it does so with a discernible sense of opening out, of Hewitt moving away from the shadows.
Blending biography and history with raw personal experience, this memoir is as lyrically written as any book of poetry and advocates for self-expression as a route out of sadness.
This memoir, though ostensibly about a lived life, suggests something spiritual, as befits its title, taken from a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem. It is also fitting because Hewitt is well-known as a gifted poet, as was Hopkins ... Even more poignantly, he opens up about his vulnerability to gay shame and its triggers. What can’t be conveyed in a short review is how poetic the writing is. This book bears reading twice it is so beautiful ... Readers seeking an elegant, profound memoir will find none better than this. Highly recommended.
Even if readers don’t know that British author Hewitt is an award-winning poet, they won’t be surprised after encountering the beauty of his prose in this affecting memoir ... The story of the subsequent deterioration of their relationship is heartbreaking and, like so much else in this remarkable book, haunting. In flashbacks and flash forwards, Hewitt also writes insightfully and movingly about his coming of age as a gay man who often seems to display a deep-seated, internalized homophobia; he longs to be normal. Happily, his book is anything but normal; it is extraordinary and simply unforgettable. Bravo!
When Hewitt, who 'was brought up vaguely Catholic,' grew up in 1990s and 2000s England, he felt he needed to show 'that I was good, that I was kind, that I followed the rules' because 'I had a secret to keep'...The secret was that he was gay at a time when the Catholic Church railed against an equal marriage rights bill passing through Parliament...That is only one of the many challenges Hewitt chronicles in this stunning memoir...The death of a boyfriend when Hewitt attended the University of Cambridge made him think of Gerard Manley Hopkins, whose poem 'The Lantern Out of Doors' provides this book’s title...Hewitt frequently references him and 'the boundaries blurring between Hopkins’s work and the life I was in,' especially during the narrative centerpiece: his post-Cambridge relationship with Elias, a young Swedish man he met on a trip to Colombia...The bulk of this book describes Elias and Hewitt’s years together, first in Liverpool and then in Sweden, and Elias’ descent from someone 'confident and chatty and open' to a man who required an extended stay in a psychiatric hospital after contemplating suicide...This memoir is a heartbreaking disquisition on 'ghosts' like Hopkins and on the unattainability of permanence, and it features one beautiful scene after another...A profoundly moving meditation on queer identity, mental illness, and the fragility of life.
Laurel Prize winner Hewitt mines the capriciousness of love and pain in this poignant reflection on living with a clinically depressed partner...Unable to find steady work after graduating Cambridge, Hewitt set off on a backpacking trip through South America, where he met Elias...The two quickly fell in love and Elias moved back to Liverpool with Hewitt, despite only knowing him for a short time...However, when the pair moved to Elias’s native Sweden, a crisis unfolded as the Elias Hewitt knew, typically easygoing and boisterous, was ripped away by a struggle with depression that led to a suicide attempt...Amid the devastation—which crescendos at their relationship’s end—Hewitt crafts a moving story of salvation, as he charts his path out of darkness and into self-acceptance...It’s an exquisite vision of queer heartbreak and liberation.
