“Dark Palace” is Frank Moorhouse’s sequel to “Grand Days.” At the beginning of World War II, the League of Nations collapses, throwing the lives of its staff into limbo. Edith Campbell Berry, newly married to journalist Robert Dole, likewise finds herself unmoored as her marriage collapses, her future as a diplomatic becomes unsure, her alcholism becomes pronounced, and her former lover, Ambrose Westwood, returns into her life.
The book becomes a kind of journey into the middle part of a person’s life: the book is an even greater series of vignettes than “Grand Days” reflecting Edith’s lack of a personal storyline, if one can put it that way. She travels back to her home in Australia to visit family and friends, but finds herself unable to reintigrate there. The book ends in San Francisco at the opening ceremony of the new United Nations–an organization that pointedly excluded, for political reasons, the involvement of former League of Nations employees.
This novel is a very profound study of a life temporarily without direction. A brilliant, heartbreaking book.
