Reading in the Dark to be a feature

Northern Irish helmer Tom Collins will produce and direct a feature adaptation of Seamus Deane’s tome “Reading in the Dark.” Script has already been penned by “Public Enemies” scribe Ronan Bennett. The pic will be produced by Future Films U.K. and Gaby Froese through EMG Media Ireland. The thriller is a coming-of-age story of a young, working-class boy growing up in Derry, Northern Ireland, in 1947. As he grows to adolescence, he begins to unravel the mystery surrounding his family’s past and discovers a slew of secrets, lies and betrayals. Pic has yet to be cast.

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118021624.html?categoryId=19&cs=1

Critics say (of the book):

“Deane is a poet and a celebrated literary historian, and this, his first novel, was deservedly shortlisted for England’s Booker prize last year (it did win the Guardian Fiction Prize). At first glance, it covers familiar turf: an Irish family riven by the political strife of the 1920s trying to live with the legacy of bloodshed and betrayal all seen through the eyes of a sensitive young boy as he looks back 20 years later. But Deane has a poet’s eye, which transforms the most everyday material into something eternally rich and strange: ‘he rain lifted away, the sunlight lay piebald on the path for a brief time, then the rain shuttered us in again.’ ” – Publishers Weekly

“The intimacy of a memoir…the suspense of a detective story…a novel suffused with magical loveliness.” – The New York Times Book Review

You can read an excerpt here:

http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780375700231&view=excerpt