Sidebar: Alan Garner

[pedanther]

The free book table at Swancon had an old copy of Alan Garner's The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, which I picked up because I figured it was about time I actually read it. It's the 1978 Ace edition, which amuses me because of how obviously the cover is pitching for a particular audience. (The black-robed-and-cowled villain exists in the novel, for the record, but the mask is entirely in the imagination of the cover designer.)

So now I've finally read that, and have the first sequel on hold at the library.

Because another thing I learned at Swancon this year is that there are now two sequels to The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. A few years ago, fifty years after the notoriously ambiguous conclusion of The Moon of Gomrath, Garner published a new sequel called Boneland. Instead of trying to finish out the story as originally intended, as a trilogy of children's books, it's a novel for the many children who became adults during the long wait, with the protagonist as an adult haunted by the unfinished business of the strange things he encountered as a child. The panelist who was talking about it at Swancon said that it's denser and more complicated than the first two books, and also that she found it very satisfying. So I have my eye on the library's copy of that as well.

Comments

[leecetheartist]

Hmm good thing you saw Weirdstone before I did, because I would have swooped on it too. I meant to get to that panel, as I have a childhood fondness for Garner. Thanks for the new info about Boneland!

[thisbluespirit]

it's a novel for the many children who became adults during the long wait, with the protagonist as an adult haunted by the unfinished business of the strange things he encountered as a child. The panelist who was talking about it at Swancon said that it's denser and more complicated than the first two books

LOL, why am I not surprized?

[pedanther]

That might have been phrased more elegantly the other way around, I admit.

[igenlode]

I remember not liking Weirdstone very much, and I think actively being put off by Moon of Gomrath, though I don't remember why -- probably the inconclusive (= unsatisfactory) ending you mention.

But I don't think I ever really got on with Alan Garner; one of those authors with a slightly sadistic streak, I feel, like John Masters and non-Hornblower C.S. Forester. I had a copy of The Owl Service hanging around for a long time (which is where I first came across the legend of Blodeuedd), which pretty much chews up its characters, and I also read Elidor, which as I recall ends up by destroying its world -- all the magic turns ugly and falls away back into rubbish...

Obviously that was a long time ago, and I only really have the vaguest impressions remaining over the intervening years. But I remember them as effective -- but nasty. Nastily effective.

[fred_mouse]

Yeah, Garner doesn't pull his punches on the negative side of the world much. His later stuff heads more into the mystic, but he still doesn't treat his protagonists well. I'm reading 'Strandloper' for the first time at the moment; it is one of these later works, and it is very much an adult book.

Interestingly, I think that some of Garner's work is a lot like later YA - he was kind of out of his time. 'The Owl Service' is definitely one of those. I'm about halfway through re-reading that, and it is so much more like the contemporary YA I read than I remember it being like juvenilia of the time.