Discovering “new” words is one of a wordie’s greatest pleasures.
This week, tenebrous made its way into my inbox, courtesy of Merriam-Webster’s word of the day email which refreshes, clarifies and explains the how and why of words commonly used and often misused.
The “sound” of tenebrous is glorious, almost onomatopoeiac. It is, according to M-W, a formal word used as a synonym of gloomy. It can also be used to describe dark, unlit places (like a “tenebrous abyss”) or things that are difficult to understand (as in a “tenebrous tangle of lies”).
You can almost feel its tendrils wrapping around your tongue.
It’s a perfect word for poor Saffers. We live in tenebrous times with load shedding, but that’s not all. We also must negotiate a tangle of lies and cover-ups wound around us by our public servants and masters.
There are all manner of skivey scammers who come up with (you have to hand it to them) ingenious ploys to get their dirty hands on our identities, livelihoods or savings. That’s not counting the violent ones who are prepared to spill blood even for small gains.
Every day, we are told of new and improved crookery at the highest levels. It’s so pervasive and continuous, it’s a wonder anyone thinks a response denying responsibility or accountability is received with anything but rolled eyes, deep breaths and resignation from exhausted citizens.
If you want justice of any sort, you have to turn to fiction. We did.
They may not use words like tenebrous, but Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Defiance by Brian Freeman and The Girl in the Eagle’s Talons by Karin Smirnoff provided absorbing entertainment.
I’ve loved the Bourne series (and the movies) since the “olden” days when I, as a girl, discovered him in the library. I’m not sure how I was allowed to check them out when I was 12 or 13, but they provided hours of gripping reading.
Since Ludlum’s death, various authors have revisited the Treadstone agent, some more successfully than others. I start them with a sense of looming letdown, thankfully never realised.
In this latest one, Bourne is being hunted yet again by someone high up the US government ladder, this time using an assassin who shares a long history with our man and others in old secret programmes. Our hero must escape and evade an equally skilled hunter, tracking a man who has claimed the lives of highly trained operators and finding what links them all before he gets to Bourne.
Freeman teases out the story, keeping you turning pages and escaping the real-life tenebrificism (okay, I made that up) with some dark skills of his own.
The Dragon Tattoo heroine Lisbeth Salander makes a terrific return in the topical and intense Eagle’s Talon, as does journalist Mikael Blomkvist in a cameo role.
Salander’s niece Svala is an extraordinary teenager who has lived with her mother on the dark side. Now Svala’s mother has disappeared ‒ one of too many disappearances for a tiny town in the far north of Sweden.
Their search for the missing people explodes into violence as they go head-to-head with a shady, ruthless corporate giant determined to control the world’s most valuable natural resources.
Both delivered a welcome dose of justice.
- Slogrove is news editor
The Independent on Saturday