Four Darks

A toxic affair with an older man, a sadistic father, a mysteriously missing mother-and a brutal winter.
FOUR DARKS sends sixteen-year-old Jack on a fateful journey, exploring obsession, survival and the desperate wish to belong.

FOUR DARKS follows Jack through a bleak December in London as he flees an abusive home and falls into a dangerously manipulative relationship with an art collector. What begins as a search for safety quickly becomes a devastating entanglement-part obsession, part escape-as Jack struggles to navigate love, loneliness, and the harshness of growing up when no one's looking out for you. He confronts desperation, cruelty, and fate, armed only with a dry, sardonic humor that keeps him standing when little else does.

Told in lyrical, precise prose and compared to works by Hanya Yanagihara and Ocean Vuong, Four Darks is as tender as it is brutal. It doesn't flinch, and it doesn't offer easy answers-but for readers who want to feel everything, it delivers.

The prose throughout is always excellent and at times sublime and literary. Heartachingly beautiful and affective. There were a number to times I thought I might be reading Empress Yanagihara (no finer compliment from me). These sections were so earthshatteringly beautiful and sad that I could not contain hot tears from flowing fiercely and sharply.
-Jaidee

An impressive debut novel.
-Neil P.

Absolutely great book. It will stay with me a long time.
-paperman

A well-written and stark look at what can happen to a person who has no one to turn to, and the ways that one move can put you on a quick spiral into the dangerous and unknown.
-Brews.and.Books

... heartbreaking and challenging, but Jack's sardonic and sharp wit keeps it from being depressing. The dialogue is sharp and clever, the characters are vivid and credible and the writing is skilled, effortless and beautiful.
-Jay Colson/Goodreads

The writing pulled me in so quickly. I stayed up way past my bedtime to read, and considering that I have a small baby and a job, the fact that I've sacrificed hours of precious sleep to read this story I think tells quite a lot about how GOOD the prose is, and how enthralling the narrative.
-Chiara D'Agosto

Four Darks is bound to be a divisive debut, but I do hope Vogel finds an audience, as he's clearly a skilled writer able to tackle tough subjects.
-Nick/Goodreads

Loved it [...] ... very straightforward on the one hand, on the other hand it has a metaphorical subtext to it, that I found quite intriguing.
-David Indoff

... the writing is very good and it's for sure an intriguing read that pulls you along. I found it hard to put this down because I just wanted to read on and on, you're left at end of chapter cliff hangers at times with no other choice but to turn the page.
-James Cooper

"The writing of Four Darks is so captivating that I found myself occasionally pausing to wonder just how Mr. Vogel captured so much meaning in a single sentence."
-D. Sutton

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