An unnamed narrator guides us through Reading in the Dark, which begins when he is a young boy and ends when he is a young adult. He grows up in a working-class family in Derry and contends with the difficulty of his community’s socio-economic situation as well as its political conflicts.

Most significantly, the narrator is on a quest to unearth his family’s secret about his uncle Eddie. This quest informs much of the action in the novel. From a very early age, the narrator is aware that his mother is keeping things from him. Of her, he notes, “keep your secrets, I don’t mind. But, at the same time, I wanted to know everything” (45). He wants to know everything but also senses that uncovering the secret will wreak havoc within his family.

As he grows up, the narrator learns more and more about his family’s secrets, and he embarks on a path to self-actualization. He is bent on taking ownership of a family narrative that lives in silence and on reclaiming it for himself. Though he eventually pieces the narrative together, this not seem to cause any kind of catharsis within his family. They do not talk about it openly, and only his mother seems to know most of the information in the narrative.