Alan Garner

[Rane Longfox]

Who has read any books by this guy? Pretty much the first thing I ever read. Rather disturbing at times, but still an enduring favorite...

 

[GOLLUM]

Yes Cal, The Weird Stone Of Brimingstone along with Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea series were the first fantasy books I ever read some 25 years ago...

I remember enjoiyng that particular book by Allan Garner....

 

[Rane Longfox]

The other one I remember was called "The Owl Service", but I have really no idea what it was about. Remember reading it, but it didn't stick in the memory like the Weirdstone book...

 

[GOLLUM]

Yes I suspect Weirdstone is what he's most famous for, his "classic" book I guess....

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I recently reread The Owl Service, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen andThe Moon of Gomrath.

Probably I liked Gomrath the best, because it's the most evocative.

Didn't somebody review the Weirdstone a while back?


Edit: Someone did. It was Tsujigiri. In case anyone wants to agree or disagree with anything he said, you can find it here:

http://www.chronicles-network.net/forum/showthread.php?t=4809

 

[Rane Longfox]

Thanks for the link

 

[Cricket - Best Sport]

Red Shift is a masterpiece.

 

[weaveworld]

I read 'Elidor', which was really good.

weave

 

[Alia]

What an Bibliography!!!

1960 The Weirdstone of Brisingamen
1963 The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (paperback - revised text)
1963 The Moon of Gomrath
1965 Elidor
1966 Holly from the Bongs: A Nativity Play
1967 The Old Man of Mow
1967 The Owl Service
1969 The Hamish Hamilton Book of Goblins (aka A Book of Goblins, aka A Cavalcade of Goblins)
1973 Red Shift
1973 Red Shift (American edition with variant readings - Garner's preferred text)
1974 Holly from the Bongs: A Nativity Opera
1975 Red Shift (paperback - with corrections)
1975 The Breadhorse
1975 The Guizer
1975 The Guizer (paperback - with revised introduction)
1976 The Stone Book (Stone Book Quartet)
1977 Red Shift (with further corrections)
1977 Granny Reardun (Stone Book Quartet)
1977 Tom Fobble's Day (Stone Book Quartet)
1978 The Aimer Gate (Stone Book Quartet)
1979 The Stone Book, Granny Reardun, Tom Fobble's Day, The Aimer Gate (paperbacks - with new illustrations by Michael Foreman)
1980 The Lad of the Gad
1980 Fairytales of Gold
1981 The Lad of the Gad (American edition - with revised introduction)
1984 Alan Garner's Book of British Fairy Tales
1985 Potter Thompson
1986 A Bag of Moonshine
1993 Once Upon a Time
1993 Jack and the Beanstalk
1996 Strandloper
1997 The Little Red Hen
1997 The Voice that Thunders
1998 Grey Wolf, Prince Jack and the Firebird
1998 The Well of the Wind
2003 Thursbitch

This taken from his Unofficial website.

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~xenophon/works.html

 

[jackokent]

I read his first 4 novels as a child and loved them so much I've still got them. I think he is a fantastic author.

 

[Sass]

The other one I remember was called "The Owl Service", but I have really no idea what it was about. Remember reading it, but it didn't stick in the memory like the Weirdstone book...

The Owl Service is the first book of Garner's I ever read and it scared me silly at the time (I was about 10). I recently found the nerve to re-read it after spotting a copy in the library and then went on to read everything else of Garner's that I could find.

The Owl Service is an "expression of the myth" (as Garner put it), of the story of Blodeuwedd. The legend concerns a woman created from flowers by a Welsh wizard. She betrays her husband, Lleu, in favor of another, Gronw or Goronwy, and is turned into an owl as punishment for inducing Gronw to kill Lleu. The tale is taken from the "Fourth Branch" of The Mabinogion, one of the best known of the Welsh mythological tales.

I'm actually off to hear Garner speak about The Stone Book Quartet on Saturday (he's at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature) - and I'm really excited about it !

 

[Nesacat]

The Wierdstone of Brisingamen was the first of Garner's books I'd ever read. I read it way back in school from the school library and later went on to re-read it and also read The Moon Of Gomrath and Elidor. The books are edgy, dark and disturbing with a disconcerting way of making their way depper into your consciousness than you might have first thought.

I only read Owl Service a few years ago when I was working in the school and buying books for the library. His books are not easy to find here and the only ones I'd ever seen before were the Brisingamen ones so I was really surprised to find this one.

All the years in between and the Owl Service still managed to get under my skin and send shivers up my spine. He's a good writer and an eduring one.

 

[j d worthington]

Yes, Garner is a writer whose work I would highly recommend. He was one of the first writers to benefit somewhat from the revival of interest in fantasy in the wake of the paperback publication of Tolkien's Hobbit and LotR, but -- despite some grounding in Northern traditions -- he's completely different; and yes, his work is dark and disturbing. While some of them are for juveniles in one sense, when I read them they impressed me as being almost too dark for the current tastes ...which is more a derogatory comment on the taste than on Garner's books. And Red Shift, as noted, is a work of brilliance -- definitely not for younger readers. A highly talented man indeed.

 

[Sass]

Thursbitch and Strandloper are also powerful books. But they're marketed at adults, not teens...

 

[Cricket - Best Sport]

Thursbitch is a very atmospheric novel but it doesn't quite possess the randomness, prose, beauty and artistic verve of Red Shift.