Davis, Charles 1960- (Charles Graham Rupert Davis)

PERSONAL:

Born November 6, 1960, in England.

CAREER:

During early career, worked as a teacher in England; currently a freelance author.

WRITINGS:

Walk On, Bright Boy: A Novel, Permanent Press (Sag Harbor, NY), 2007.

Also author of walking guides.

SIDELIGHTS:

Charles Davis finds much pleasure in the exercise of walking. Except for a few years in England as a teacher, he has spent most of his life traveling the world. After leaving school, he traveled to such places as Sudan, the Ivory Coast, and Turkey, as well as to various European countries. Later, after resigning from his teaching position, he returned to this exercise and now earns an income by researching walking guides. He continues to seek out exotic places to roam, such as Libya, Timbuktu, and Zanzibar. It should be no surprise, then, that walking features prominently in his first work of fiction, Walk On, Bright Boy: A Novel.

Walking, in this story, is a spiritual exercise, much as it is for the author in his personal life. The story is set during the time of the Spanish Inquisition, not long after the Moors have been expelled from the Iberian peninsula. The narrator relates the tale of an important time in his boyhood from the perspective of an old man. A nine-year-old living in a small village in Spain, he befriends a charismatic Moor, who likes to entertain the local children with fascinating stories. He also teaches the narrator about the joys of walking as a way of connecting to nature and to God. When several of the boys turn up missing, however, the Moor, being an outsider, is accused of witchcraft. To the narrator's shame, he does not rise to the Moor's defense and watches his friend be executed. The story later takes a distinctly gothic edge as the narrator learns the true fate of the boys at the hands of a disfigured local man who practices horrifying sacrificial rites. Indeed, the boy is also a victim himself.

Writing in ForeWord Magazine, Keya Kraft noted that such early childhood traumas would understandably shake any child's faith, but that the author instead uses the tragedies as a way to show how hardship can help assert one's faith. The main character achieves this by embarking on what will be the longest walk ever in order to reconcile the realities of his life with his God. While Kraft felt that a surfeit of Christian imagery weighs down the novel somewhat, the critic asserted that "the prose is truly insightful, economical, and almost lyrical in its portrayal of the complexities of human action." A Publishers Weekly contributor suggested that "by-the-numbers plotting and thin characters drain the novel of emotional resonance," but a Kirkus Reviews writer insisted that Walk On, Bright Boy is a "poetic meditation on guilt and faith." "Despite its setting in medieval Spain," Kraft concluded, "the novel speaks to contemporary collisions of political expediency and religious faith throughout the world."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

ForeWord Magazine, September-October, 2007, Keya Kraft, review of Walk On, Bright Boy: A Novel.

Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 2007, review of Walk On, Bright Boy.

Publishers Weekly, June 11, 2007, review of Walk On, Bright Boy, p. 39.