The Dark Portal

The Dark Portal is a dark fantasy novel for children by British author Robin Jarvis. The first book in The Deptford Mice trilogy and Jarvis's debut novel, it follows the story of Audrey Brown, a mouse girl who is looking for her missing father. Her search takes her into the sewers of Deptford where, with the help of her friends and family, she must face an army of evil rats and their living god, a mysterious being known as Jupiter.[1]

The Dark Portal
First edition
AuthorRobin Jarvis
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish
SeriesThe Deptford Mice
GenreDark fantasy
PublisherMacdonald & Company
Publication date
1989
Media typePrint (Hardcover & Paperback)
Pages240
ISBN9781587171123
OCLC849988788
Followed byThe Crystal Prison 

The book was first published in the United Kingdom by Macdonald & Company in 1989, and was a runner-up for that year's Nestlé Smarties Book Prize.[2] In 2000, it was published by SeaStar Books in the United States[3] and given the Booklist Editors' Choice designation.[4][5]

Plot

In the sewers of the London borough Deptford there lurks a dark presence that fills the tunnels with fear: Jupiter, a dark god known only by his evil glowing eyes seen behind a dark "portal" in the tunnel wall. The rats worship him and do his dark bidding. No one really knows who he is except for his lieutenant Morgan.

The Deptford mice, who worship the Green Mouse who brings Spring, are aware of Jupiter's evil presence in the tunnels. One of the mice, Albert Brown, is pulled through a grate into the sewers by the dark enchantments that Jupiter has woven there. He meets a cheeky mouse from the city, Piccadilly, also lost inside the lair of the rats. When Albert is captured by Morgan, a Cornish, piebald rat with a stump for a tail and rings through his ears (none other than Jupiter's lieutenant) and brought to Jupiter, Piccadilly escapes into Albert's home, known as the Skirtings, where he meets a large number of friends.

Firstly, there is Audrey Brown, Albert's day-dreaming daughter who hates Piccadilly for surviving where her father did not. Then there is Arthur Brown, Audrey's plump and funny brother. There is also simple field mouse William Scuttle or 'Twit' and his cousin, the sickly albino runt, Oswald Chitter. Along with the old Midship-mouse Thomas Triton and Gwen Brown, the mother of Audrey and Arthur, they venture into the sewers to banish Jupiter from the world. The Rat God, however, has an evil plan to unleash the Black Death on the world once more, ridding it of humans and enabling him to conquer it.

After a tense-confrontation with Jupiter in this throne-room, during which the malevolent deity is revealed to be a monstrous cat, Audrey defeats the Dark Lord by flinging her mousebrass at him. The talisman explodes and Jupiter falls into the water, which is rapidly flooding his chamber. The spirits of the many mice and rats he has tortured and devoured then rise up and drag the dark god down to a watery grave. Audrey glimpses her father among the legion of spirits as they depart and despairs, realizing that he is truly dead. The sewer floods and the Black Death is destroyed. Thankful that they are alive, and resolving to celebrate Jupiter's downfall once they return home, the mice begin the journey back to the surface- but as they leave, Orfeo the bat foretells doom.

Main characters
  • Audrey Brown is a spunky, intelligent mouse girl with a sharp tongue that often gets her into trouble. She loves to daydream and enjoys dressing up in lacy outfits and wearing ribbons in her hair. When her father goes missing, she refuses to believe he is dead and sets out to find him.
  • Arthur Brown is the brother of Audrey, a plump, jolly mouse who often becomes irritated by his sister's saucy attitude and tendency to seemingly dream up wild, fantastic stories. Jarvis has indicated that he based the character of Arthur on himself.[6]
  • Piccadilly is a cheeky and independent young grey mouse from the city who speaks with a Cockney accent. He is an orphan whose parents were killed by an underground train. While on a foraging expedition, he becomes lost in the sewers where he encounters Albert Brown. When the two stumble upon the altar chamber of Jupiter, Albert is captured while Piccadilly barely escapes with his life. He eventually meets up with Audrey, who blames him for abandoning her father.
  • William 'Twit' Scuttle is a kindhearted country mouse who is the cousin of Oswald Chitter. The result of a forbidden union between a house mouse and a field mouse, he is viewed by most as a simpleton with "no cheese upstairs".
  • Oswald Chitter is a frail albino mouse whose mother fusses over him. Because of how tall and awkward he is, to his chagrin he is sometimes mistaken for a rat. He has the ability to find lost objects with a divining rod.
  • Thomas Triton is a retired midshipmouse who makes his home aboard the Cutty Sark. He befriends Twit when the latter is unexpectedly dropped onto the ship by the bats Orfeo and Eldritch.
  • Jupiter is a mysterious evil being worshipped as a living god by the rats in the sewers of Deptford. He lives in a shadowy portal and no one has ever seen any more of him than his blazing red eyes.
  • Morgan is a cruel piebald Cornish rat who serves as Jupiter's loyal lieutenant.
  • Madame Akkikuyu is a black rat from Morocco who travels around posing as a fortune teller. Though she lacks true magical powers, she has always longed to possess them.
  • Orfeo and Eldritch are bat brothers who can see into the future. The problem is that they intentionally make their visions as vague as possible so no one can interpret them until the events actually happen.
  • Albert Brown is the father of Audrey and Arthur. A strange force compels him to enter the sewers where he meets a horrible end at the claws of Jupiter. His disappearance sets the story in motion.
  • The Green Mouse is the benevolent deity worshipped by the mice. A rodent version of the mythical Green Man, he is the essence of nature and all growing things. His power is strongest in the spring and dies completely in the winter.

Background

Jarvis came up with the idea for The Deptford Mice trilogy while working as a model-maker for television programmes and commercials. He had been designing a big, furry alien but decided to take a break and draw something small. That something was a mouse who would become the character Oswald Chitter.[7] Jarvis continued to doodle mice, and when a friend of his saw the sketches, he suggested they be sent to a publisher. The publisher responded positively and asked if there was a story to accompany the drawings. At the time there wasn't one, but Jarvis then wrote the story of The Deptford Mice.[8] He had originally envisioned it as a picture book, but it became a 70,000 word manuscript. When Jarvis's editor told him that the manuscript could make a trilogy due to its long length, he went away and cut it, and then came up with more ideas for the second and third books.[9]

Reception

The Dark Portal has been praised as "a tale of horror and valor, good and evil, leavened with humor."[10] A starred review from Publishers Weekly called the book a "spooky and enthralling animal fantasy just right for Redwall fans" and added that Jarvis "provides counterpoint to the heart-racing adventure with scenes of haunting beauty, including Audrey's mystical encounter with the Green Mouse and the country mouse Twit's nocturnal flight over London. The author conveys a sense of place powerful enough to elevate the South London boroughs of Greenwich and Blackheath to requisite stops on any bookish child's literary tour of the British capital."[11] Deirdre B. Root of Kliatt found The Dark Portal to be "entertaining and genuinely frightening."[12] According to Patty Campbell of The Horn Book Magazine, "as publishers jockey for position in the 'what do I read after H[arry] P[otter]?' fantasy sweepstakes, only one new series has emerged as a serious contender, Robin Jarvis's saga of the Deptford mice, The Dark Portal."[13] The book also received a positive review in The Sacramento Bee stating that "this fast-paced suspense tale is all heart in its gripping story of good vs. evil and life-threatening confrontations beneath the streets of London."[14]

Lloyd Alexander called The Dark Portal "a grand-scale epic" that is "filled with high drama, suspense, and some genuine terror",[15] while Madeleine L'Engle said that "Robin Jarvis joins the ranks of Kenneth Grahame, Richard Adams, and Walter Wangerin in the creation of wonderfully anthropomorphic animals. Audrey and Arthur Brown tell us a lot about ourselves."[16] Peter Glassman, owner of the New York City children's bookstore Books of Wonder, obtained a copy of The Dark Portal while on a trip to London. He greatly enjoyed it and would now and then come across others who had as well.[17] The author of The Outsiders, S. E. Hinton, once told Glassman that The Deptford Mice novels became her son's favorites after finding them in Britain, but she could not understand why they were not yet available in the United States. Glassman would eventually obtain the rights for his company, SeaStar Books, to publish the trilogy and make it more readily available to American readers.[18]

Adaptations

Cancelled film

In the mid-1990s, there were plans for Jim Henson Pictures to make a film adaptation of The Deptford Mice, which would be based on the story of The Dark Portal and feature animatronic puppets.[19][20] The project was ultimately abandoned for reasons unknown.

Theatre

In 2010 London-based theatre company Tiny Dog Productions[21] created the first official stage production of The Dark Portal under licence from Robin Jarvis. After successful preview showings at The Space Theatre, London.;[22] the production was again performed in April 2011 at the New Wimbledon Theatre.[23]

References
  1. Phillips, Lawrence; Witchard, Anne (23 September 2010). London Gothic: Place, Space and the Gothic Imagination. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 115. ISBN 9781441159977.
  2. Text on the front cover of the 2000 Hodder Silver edition of The Dark Portal.
  3. "NORTH-SOUTH/SEASTAR". Publishers Weekly. 247 (29). 17 July 2000.
  4. "EDITORS' CHOICE 2000". Booklist. 1 January 2001.
  5. Encyclopedia.com | Contemporary Authors | Jarvis, Robin 1963- .
  6. Jarvis, Robin (4 June 2013). Thorn Ogres of Hagwood. Open Road Media. p. 192. ISBN 9781453299210.
  7. Jarvis, Robin. "The Deptford Mice - The Dark Portal". Robinjarvis.com. Retrieved 27 September 2020.
  8. Jarvis, Robin. "Robin Jarvis - Frequently Asked Questions". Robinjarvis.com. Retrieved 27 September 2020.
  9. Jarvis, Robin (20 July 2000). The Dark Portal. Hodder Children's Books. ISBN 9780340788622.
  10. Estes, Sally. "The Dark Portal: Book One of The Deptford Mice". Booklist.
  11. "The Dark Portal". Publishers Weekly. 247 (36). 4 September 2000.
  12. Root, Deirdre B. (January 2002). "Jarvis, Robin. The dark portal". Kliatt. 36 (1).
  13. Campbell, Patty (January 2001). "A Spyglass on YA 2000". The Horn Book Magazine. 77 (1).
  14. Green, Judy (15 October 2000). "Library: Redwall fans will like morality tale set in London sewers". The Sacramento Bee.
  15. Jarvis, Robin (2001). The Crystal Prison. Back cover: Praise for The Dark Portal quote from Lloyd Alexander: SeaStar Books. ISBN 1587171074.
  16. Jarvis, Robin (2001). The Crystal Prison. Back cover: Praise for The Dark Portal quote from Madeleine L'Engle: SeaStar Books. ISBN 1587171074.
  17. Glassman, Peter (1 August 2000). The Dark Portal: Afterword. SeaStar Books. p. 239. ISBN 9781587170218.
  18. Glassman, Peter (1 August 2000). The Dark Portal: Afterword. SeaStar Books. p. 239. ISBN 9781587170218.
  19. Cowie, Peter (1997). Variety International Film Guide 1997. Andre Deutsch Ltd. p. 72. ISBN 9780233990231.
  20. Books Magazine: Volume 10, Issues 1-4. Publishing News Limited. 1996. p. 27.
  21. Tiny Dog Productions Archived 2011-02-11 at the Wayback Machine
  22. Golby. J: The Deptford Mice, The Space, 2010
  23. The Deptford Mice, New Wimbledon Theatre, 2011
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