[books 2012] Alan Garner

[inulro]

2. The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner

This month's book club book.  It's an early children's fantasy novel.

I first read this when I was about 8 or 9 and loved it.  I re-read it when I was stuck at home and heavily medicated when I was living in Manchester, at which point I learned that the locations in the book are all real places, although that's real places that today bear no resemblance whatsoever to what they were like in the 50s, when this book is set.

I have to say it hasn't aged well.  It has good points, and I love the use of real geography (the fact that it's all millionaires, WAGs, Ferrari dealerships etc. nowadays makes me giggle), but the pacing is weird, and the ending just - well, ends.  

If I had kids I'd probably recommend that they read it; for adults I say go read The Owl Service, which is much better and has more ideas to think about in it.

Comments

[quercus.livejournal.com]

I had Alan Garner forced on me as a kid and I _hated_ it. I re-read them a few years back (and others, like the time-travelling Romans), to see how they looked second time round.

Weirdstone (and Gomrath) was a lot better than I remembered it. He has a great sense of place too. The trouble is though that it's Tolkien, but not Tolkien. It can't avoid the comparison, but nor does it come out of it well. Good enough, but not great.

The Owl Service I found rather better. It's primarily a novel of teenage jealousy and so how on earth was a junior school kid expected to understand a word of it, beyond the pretty fairytale with spooky owls? It's a spooky hormone novel, and it can hold its own against most of New England's offerings in that line.

[serpentstar.livejournal.com]

The Edge itself is still very much like it was, and quite spooky.

Re: illness -- did you know that Garner himself spent much of his childhood ill? Apparently that was part of his writerly inspiration!