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Though perhaps some of the characters do know. For who exactly is Meg? Or, for that matter, the always-on-hand taxi driver from High Forrest Taxis, Bert – of course, his surname would be Forster? Even the telephonist at the taxi firm is called ‘Fay’. Once Colin nears some kind of personal resolution, Meg, Bert, the taxi firm – all disappear. The house where Colin and Meg have talked many times is closed up, and has been for years, though a handyman (another Bert) is busy with a spot of light maintenance when Colin calls. All that is left of Meg is a voice, urging Colin to forgive and accept himself. Somehow Meg, Susan and Colin need each other to form a ‘Trinity’ (‘we are always with you, Colin. Always have been. Always shall be. All three…’) So, just a minute, perhaps that early suspicion was ‘correct’ – Meg/Morrigan? If so, I’ll have to rethink the Morrigan. I need another reading. Or as many as it takes. We began with the critics, but where does the critic begin with Treacle Walker, this summation of Garner’s career, as people keep describing it? The reviewers we have already encountered have clearly struggled. Over the years, I have come more and more to appreciate John Clute’s belief that to write proper criticism one needs to discuss the whole of the fiction, rather than leaving the reader hanging on the edge of a precipice at the vital moment by refusing to discuss the ending. As much as possible, now, I always try to discuss the ending. In part, it’s as simple as the fact that I don’t believe, except possibly in some strands of detective fiction, that knowing the ending before you get there is to spoil the novel. It’s the journey that I find interesting. I’ve no especial need to be surprised by fiction; I’ve read enough over the years to recognise how stories are likely to pan out. Rather, I like to be absorbed by reading fiction; a surprise is a bonus. Part of writing criticism is to analyse the ending. But not everyone agrees with my view. So, if you absolutely feel you must read the book before you read my commentary, this is the moment to step away and do just that.
A few years later, after The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath and after I had returned to teach at the school, he came to talk with my 1D: Reading Garner is, for some people, like a treasure hunt. They eagerly chase the breadcrumb-trail of names and places and historical events. I’ve done it myself in the past—and, to be honest, I’m fighting hard to resist doing it now—and in a way it’s not surprising that people do. It’s very much a mark of Garner’s work that it is so deeply embedded in the landscape and history of Cheshire (and Garner has stated more than once that he prefers the company of historians and archaeologists to that of literary people). The words Garner chooses, carves, inserts into his prose are perfect. He deploys short, accurate words better than anyone else writing in English today, and he makes it look simple.
verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ Innocence Lost: Colin Whisterfield in the multi-level, multi-ambiguous, ever-shifting Bonelands. Is he - in reality - a survivor of child sex abuse? Whose trauma was then compounded when his sister drowned accidentally? That his memories of dealing with an evil witch in a primal fight against evil, abducted to her by her dwarf servant, are really of sexual trauma. Colin has grown up to be a brilliant, but extremely troubled, astrophysicist. Susan is not there. Colin is autistic, has problems with memory (he remembers everything after the age of 13, nothing before), cannot relate to other humans, is searching the sky for intelligent life, and hunting for his sister in the stars. As the book begins he is being released from a hospital after some kind of breakdown. The next day, they were walking together across Castle Hill, an iron age hill fort in Huddersfield. “Just inconsequentially, Bob told me about a historical character, a local tramp called Walter Helliwell, known as Treacle Walker. He was a healer, claiming to be able to cure all things except jealousy. And I looked at Bob and said, ‘You remember last night? Well, just make a note that on the afternoon of Sunday 15 July 2012, you’ve given me an idea, and you’ve given me a book.”
There are well-drawn characters in those books, but they are not Colin or Susan. And the landscape of Alderley Edge is the strongest character.) Meg Massey. The name Megan means 'pearl'. Pearl was a Middle-English poem written by a person that some claim was also the Gawain And The Gren Knight poet. The most commonly suggested candidate for authorship is John Massey of Cotton, Cheshire note Now Combermere, Nantwich: quite a way to the west of Alderley Edge. A pearl is a gemstone nurtured in deep water which has lunar associations.
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Again, nothing in Lowdon’s summary is actually wrong, per se, but neither does she seem to me to actually engage with the novel. Or, rather, I don’t think she particularly wants to engage with the novel. Ironically, however—or possibly unintentionally—she does hit on something significant when she describes the novel as “feeling curiously outdated,” but there is no chance for her to follow up on this. I’ll be doing that for her later. Indeed, an inferred detail is that given the vulgarisation of the area, magic is no longer possible here in the way it was fifty years ago: a theme of The Moon of Gomrath was the way how, even then, human ignorance and "progress" was driving out the older magical races, Good and Evil alike, and forcing them to the margins, like Native Americans. How pollution was killing the Elves, and the introduction of firearms to human warfare was having a psychic resonance - for the bad - on the older peoples. The caves under the Edge are seen to be empty. Were the older peoples ever here at all, or has human interference reached a tipping point and rendered them extinct? Did we kill the Magic? But like so much else, this is ambiguous... Magic Versus Science: The "Magic Is Mysterious" version, which cannot easily be quantified according to known science. Boneland, the long awaited third volume in Alan Garner’s Weirdstone trilogy, is a finely drawn and ambiguous tale, that every reader will draw different things from. This is perhaps the mark of a truly great novel, and one that will surely last in memory as long as its predecessors. Considering the long gap since the last volume, The Moon of Gomrath, a reread of the previous books will place the reader in a good position to get the most from this final volume. For all that, Boneland strikes its own ground and Mr Garner takes the tale in a bold new direction. No, it isn’t Weirdstone and it isn’t Gomrath, but Boneland seems the perfect epilogue to those earlier stories. The threads between all three books remain strong on a deeper level than your average cut-and-dried trilogy. Genre Shift: The emphasis moves from outright fantasy to a more nuanced psychological drama with overtones of science fiction.
Alan Garner has always feared unexpectedly dying before he finishes the book he’s working on. It means that this most beloved of writers – whose works feel chiselled from the Cheshire landscape of his home, and whose devoted fans range from Philip Pullman and Neil Gaiman to Margaret Atwood – keeps joking that he’s written his last book. Over 50 years ago Alan Garner wrote The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and its sequel, The Moon of Gomrath, two books of magic and myth, featuring the children Colin and Susan. They encounter a wizard who guards sleepers beneath the hills – Arthur and his knights, perhaps – sleepers who will wake to save us in our time of greatest need. The children encounter elves and dwarfs, goblins and killer cats, battle the evil shape-shifting Morrigan, and make their way through a patchwork of mythic events and battles, culminating, at the end of The Moon of Gomrath, with a Herne-like Hunter and his men riding their horses to meet the nine sisters of the Pleiades, leaving Susan, who needed to be with them, behind, wanting to go the stars, and Colin only to watch. This is the literary equivalent of marmite for me. I loved the confusing nature of the fantasy and how Garner interwove the psychosis throughout the tale. However, I hated the fact that it was not the end to the trilogy that the fans of the Weirdstone of Brisingamen deserved.No Communities Were Harmed: Alderley Edge, Macclesfield, Mobberly, Lindow and Wilmslow are all real places in Cheshire. The nearby Jodrell Bank radio telescope is a world-famous research institute owned by the University of Manchester. The street names quoted all exist in Alderley Edge. Most of the places mentioned in the book along the Edge such as The Wizard's Well, Goldenstone, the Beacons, the Points, and so on, are also real. The only harm intended is to the ongoing "gentrification" of Alderley Edge by the rich and tasteless, a process Garner is known to loathe in a town he loves and still lives in. The movement of time is not linear in Garner’s novels. As Colin in Boneland suggests: ‘Time is multi-dimensional and exists in different forms’ (Garner 83-84). It is patterned on personal history and identity connected with landscape and legend. Scratching surface layers reveal a past coexistent with the present. Boneland and the medieval text of Sir Gawain are linked by setting and dialect, but also by the failure to recognize a sacred connection with the natural landscape, spiritual values, identity and heritage. In Garner, landscape and language are threatened by loss through material values, Capitalist homogenization, the commercial destruction of the environment and violent acts of architectural vandalism. Meg - her name invokes Arthurian witch Morgana leFay. Who trapped the wizard, Merlin, into eternal imprisonment in a cavern under the earth.E
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