Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner

[cromagnonman]

Anyone who has ever read Kipling's PUCK OF POOK'S HILL will remember that Puck, and the attendant spirits of Old England, are first summoned up by A Midsummer Night's Dream being performed three times over on Midsummer's Eve in a fairy ring right under the titular Pook's Hill. The young protagonists of the book have had a small play made for them out of "the big Shakespeare one" by their father.

The reason I bring this up is that for sixty or seventy pages I experienced a similar reaction whilst reading Alan Garner's treasured 1960 debut novel. The only difference being that it was THE LORD OF THE RINGS which I felt I was reading a savagely pared down and diluted version of. All of Tolkien's literary furniture seemed to still be in situ, from the magical artefact that has to be protected from a resurgent evil, to the ubiquitous sagacious wizard, the valiant dwarfs, arrow shooting elves, bog dwelling ring-wraith and an army of goblins and with children deputising for hobbits. However self-evident it was that Garner was too superior a storyteller to be dismissed as a Tolkien imitator the proximity of publication between the two works seemed to suggest that Garner was subject - willingly or otherwise - to the enormous gravitational influence of Tolkien's epic.



But then quite spontaneously my entire perception of the book was profoundly altered and my appreciation of it magnified accordingly. The turning point occurred when the young - and it must be conceded rather bland - protagonists, Colin and Susan, experience a terrifying odyssey through the abandoned mine workings that riddle the plateau of Alderley Edge. Mines of Moria allusions notwithstanding, as an unrepentant claustrophobe I found the protracted pot-holing sequences to be the stuff of my very worst nightmares. By the time the outside world is once again attained I was completely converted and utterly engaged with this simply magnificent book.

What I believe is so powerful and appealing about it is the manner in which Garner makes a fully believable fantasy world - by turns both wondrous and sinister - out of the landscape of Cheshire. Just as Kipling did he fosters the engaging idea of a surviving world of folklore living in parallel with the real world but hidden from it by modern man's loss of imagination.

The actual story is a straightforward fable of good and evil played out against the backdrop of the Peak District wherein dwells the wizard Cadellin, the mage of Alderley, who guards a sleeping army of knights destined to battle the evil of Nastrond, the spirit of Darkness. But the Weirdstone of Brisingamen, the magical jewel that protects the cave of Fundindelve wherein the knights slumber, has been lost. Colin and Susan find themselves drawn inextricably into the efforts to recover the stone and thwart the schemes of Nastrond's earthly servitors, the Morthbrood.

It is a simple if compelling premise and one developed with consumate skill which is all the more remarkable when one considers that it was Garner's first book. There are moments of genuine pathos and emotional poignancy and several quite nightmarish sequences also which would put real children into therapy for years but which Colin and Susan suffer with scarcely believable equanimity: none more so than the moment when they are hunted down by a foraging squad of goblins - or Svart-Alfar as the book names them - bound and trussed and prepared for transport to their subterranean caverns.

The book culminates with a journey to the peak of Shuttlingslow which for all its measure of mere miles rather than hundreds of leagues matches Tolkien in scope whatever it surrenders in scale and is marvellously eventful and exciting.

The book certainly isn't without its faults; magical aid seems to come the children's way with unbelievable convenience and indeed Garner himself is said to nowadays largely dismiss it as a bad book. But it isn't a bad book at all. Quite the opposite and the way in which it celebrates old fashioned values of loyalty, friendship and duty makes it one to cherish and to treasure.     

[andydecker]

Alan Garner – The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (Collins, 1960, hc, this edition Armada Lions, 1971, twelfth impression 1976)

Published as children books, the Alderly Edge novels were originally 2 books. In 2012 Garner published the novel Boneland, nominally completing a trilogy begun some 50 years earlier.

Reading this today – as an adult – it is quite noticeable what blanks the protagonists Susan and Colin are. They have not much characterization. But if I had read this in the 70s as a kid I wouldn't have cared a bit; indeed it helps the reader to immerse himself in the story.

Garner manages to transform a bit of country into a magical adventure land full of magic, evil villains and dark creatures, noble warriors, dwarfs who speak with owls and sorcerers. I had forgotten most of the content over the years, I first read it 30 years ago or so, but the usual automatic categorization of tropes and cliches which comes with the territory after reading too much Fantasy – the sorcerer is a Gandalf stand-in, the mythical past with the sleeping knights makes no sense historically speaking and so on – quickly vanished because of the fun how simple but effective this is written. It invites a kind of daydreaming, where a grove in a wood on a walk suddenly becomes the gate into the otherworld in one's imagination. This was written before children's books became Young Adult with all its pretension, and it is better for it.

[helrunar]

I liked it when I re-read it several years ago. A few days ago I started reading the sequel, The Moon of Gondor, which will go into one of the little streetside library boxes when I'm finished with it.

The story features very effective dashes of color, wit and suspense, but having just re-read Lord of the Rings earlier this summer, the debt to Tolkien is quite obvious. I do think that Garner has a better sense of pacing than Tolkien had. Heresy perhaps but when reading the Tolkien books (I re-read The Hobbit after the Rings saga), there's an awful lot of characters trundling wearily along to get to the next adventure, and the reader also has to trundle wearily along.

cheers, Steve

[Shrink Proof]

I recall quite enjoying it when I read it as a schoolboy. This somewhat surprised me as I was very dubious about any book that my English teachers insisted all pupils must read as it was A Good Book. Doubly so as it was made very clear that one reason we should read it was that Alan Garner was a former pupil of the school. However, I remember that it felt like an interesting and engaging story (I'd only read The Hobbit by then, LOTR came later). I'm sure that some of that was because I lived only a few miles from where it was set and even at that age had visited some of the places Garner wrote about.

Whether my jaded 21st century brain would still rate it now is another matter....

[helrunar]

Malcolm, this is an interesting 1978 short documentary with Alan Garner doing a kind of local history tour of Alderley.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZD0qvovGMY

The blurb mentions Elidor which is one I never read.

cheers, Steve