Red Shift by Alan Garner

[Anthony G Williams]

Alan Garner is best known for writing children's fantasies like The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, previously reviewed on this blog. However, he went on to write more challenging novels, still usually classified as for "young adults" but with plenty in them to keep adults absorbed. Red Shift is perhaps the most extreme example of this.

The plot follows three linked threads. The first and main one concerns the relationship of a girl and a brilliant but disturbed boy in their late teens in contemporary Cheshire. The other two feature the lives of their earlier counterparts in the same locations, during the English Civil War and in Roman Britain. Apart from the characters and the locations, a key linking element is a polished stone axe which appears in all three threads.

The style of writing is decidedly unconventional. There are no chapters, and the story chops between the threads without warning. Long time gaps can occur between consecutive sentences. There is little description or narrative to explain what is going on. The book consists almost entirely of dialogue between the characters; a clipped, elliptical form of speech which leaves the reader having to concentrate to fathom what is happening. It is not an easy read.

Neither is there much cheer in the three plots, which are downbeat and grim. Ursula Le Guin is quoted on the cover as describing this as "a bitter, complex, brilliant book", and I don't disagree. I found this short novel worth the effort to read despite my somewhat unenthusiastic description, and would particularly recommend it to those interested in the craft of writing.

(An extract from my SFF blog)

 

[j d worthington]

It's been many years since I read Red Shift, so there's not much I can add, other than to agree that it is a brilliant book, and shows Garner stretching his abilities and showing that he had the stuff to do it right.....

 

[gil]

I agree, this was the least likeable of his books.

 

[Extollager]

Has anyone seen the TV adaptation of The Owl Service from back in the Seventies or so?

 

[blacknorth]

Wasn't Red Shift made into an episode of Play For Today by the BBC? I think I've seen a copy doing the rounds.

The plot seems awfully derivative of the novels LP Davies was writing in the 60s - Psychogeist springs to mind.

 

[GOLLUM]

HMMM...I of course know Garner best from the classic Weirdstone of Brisignamen. I will have to track down a copy of Red Shift as I have never read it before.

 

[Extollager]

UK readers can probably go to Alderley Edge without too much trouble. For us American readers of the Weirdstone, it can be fun, in an armchair traveler sort of way, to follow the story with an Ordnance Survey map (Macclesfield) at hand.

Critic David Daiches, I think, originated the term "topographic romance." He was discussing Stevenson's Kidnapped, another delightful cross-country adventure. The topographic romance tells of exciting adventures, I suppose usually or always involving pursuit, across a real landscape. A third example is Adams's Watership Down and his Plague Dogs. If Buchan's Thirty-Nine Steps involves real landscapes in addition to the climactic bit at the cliffs of Dover, it would be a TR. Perhaps Daiches would have admitted stories set in imaginary landscapes as TRs, as long as they had a strong emphasis on topography, in which case The Lord of the Rings would qualify. But I like to reserve the term for imaginary adventures set in real terrain.

I would love to write some such story, since I have enjoyed those of others so much!

 

[Anthony G Williams]

I enjoy reading stories set in real places, especially if I'm familiar with them. This does, of course, apply to a lot of thrillers and especially detective stories: in the latter category, the Venetian detective series by Donna Leon and the Edinburgh detective (Rebus) series by Ian Rankin stand out. I tend to read these with a book in one hand and a map in the other.

Then there are the real locations given fantastical meaning, e.g. by Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code, which can also be fun (as long as you don't take them seriously!).

 

[GOLLUM]

Then there are the real locations given fantastical meaning, e.g. by Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code, which can also be fun (as long as you don't take them seriously!).

Damn!...and you were making so much sense up until then Anthony!....

 

[Extollager]

UK readers can probably go to Alderley Edge without too much trouble. For us American readers of the Weirdstone, it can be fun, in an armchair traveler sort of way, to follow the story with an Ordnance Survey map (Macclesfield) at hand.

Critic David Daiches, I think, originated the term "topographic romance." He was discussing Stevenson's Kidnapped, another delightful cross-country adventure. The topographic romance tells of exciting adventures, I suppose usually or always involving pursuit, across a real landscape. A third example is Adams's Watership Down and his Plague Dogs. If Buchan's Thirty-Nine Steps involves real landscapes in addition to the climactic bit at the cliffs of Dover, it would be a TR. Perhaps Daiches would have admitted stories set in imaginary landscapes as TRs, as long as they had a strong emphasis on topography, in which case The Lord of the Rings would qualify. But I like to reserve the term for imaginary adventures set in real terrain.

I would love to write some such story, since I have enjoyed those of others so much!

Rachel Hewitt

has an article about the possible demise of Ordnance Survey maps. O Britain -- you have lost so much -- shall you also lose your lovely maps?

The end of the road for Ordnance Survey? | Books | The Guardian

See here

http://fancyclopedia.org/topographic-romance

on topographic romance.

 

[Anthony G Williams]

It would be distressing to lose the paper OS maps, I must have dozens of them scattered about the house.

Incidentally, my favourite novel (not SF) has a powerful sense of place throughout - Erskine Childers' The Riddle of the Sands, a classic spy-plus-sailing adventure set on the North German coast and Frisian Islands, first published in 1903 and available ever since. The book includes maps of the area (essential to understand it) and the last time I read it I had an iPad at my side and followed the course of the adventure on Google Earth.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

One of my all-time faves also has a strong map theme, at least in its opening half - The Weathermonger by Peter Dickinson. The main characters travel along various roads in southern England/Wales in a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost. Such a great book - has stayed with me since I read it over 40 years ago.

 

[BAYLOR]

I recently found a copy of this book in a used bookstore. I might just give it a read.