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sarzwix's review against another edition
1.0
I hated this. I read it straight after the other 2 books in the trilogy, but unlike those, which I loved, I spent the whole of this book trying to understand what the hell was going on.
I could see that it was supposed to be from the mind of a very disturbed man, but, seriously?! What the hell? Where was he? Who were the spirits it kept talking about? Where were all the places he said he was going? Did he actually go there? Or just dreamwalk? And the ultimate question, where did Susan go?, was never really answered.
I would have much, much preferred for the story to have followed the adolescent Colin. Will probably never read this again.
I could see that it was supposed to be from the mind of a very disturbed man, but, seriously?! What the hell? Where was he? Who were the spirits it kept talking about? Where were all the places he said he was going? Did he actually go there? Or just dreamwalk? And the ultimate question, where did Susan go?, was never really answered.
I would have much, much preferred for the story to have followed the adolescent Colin. Will probably never read this again.
jan603dd's review against another edition
4.0
Had I read the first two novels of this trilogy as a child, this book would be my favourite thing ever. As it stands I came to Garner as an adult and only read the previous novels as preparation for this one. I therefore have to say that, of his adult novels, "Strandloper" slightly edges this one out - dealing as it does with Australia, my adopted home - though this rates a very close second, dealing as it does with my favourite thing: stories and storytelling.
I love "meta" fiction. I love stories that examine why we tell stories whilst telling us a story. I love stories about the power of fiction - be they the stories we consume or the stories we tell privately to ourselves, the stories that make up our lives. To be fair, regarding reading the first two novels, while they were certainly written with skill, and curious from a historical aspect, they were stories for children and in places quite plain and of the "... and then this happened and then this happened and this happened too" variety, but to have the author, after 50 years, write an examination, a re-contextualisation is a wonderful treat and does put the earlier books in a better light - I thought the most interesting aspect of the original books was (surprise!) the way they discussed stories; stories of the land, stories of the people, stories we've forgotten and how dangerous that forgetfulness can be, having read the third book I can humbly assume that Garner felt the same.
Is this book for everyone? No. Is this book for die-hard fans of the originals hoping to recapture childhood magic and wonder? Not all of them, no. Is this book an absolute treasure? Most assuredly.
I love "meta" fiction. I love stories that examine why we tell stories whilst telling us a story. I love stories about the power of fiction - be they the stories we consume or the stories we tell privately to ourselves, the stories that make up our lives. To be fair, regarding reading the first two novels, while they were certainly written with skill, and curious from a historical aspect, they were stories for children and in places quite plain and of the "... and then this happened and then this happened and this happened too" variety, but to have the author, after 50 years, write an examination, a re-contextualisation is a wonderful treat and does put the earlier books in a better light - I thought the most interesting aspect of the original books was (surprise!) the way they discussed stories; stories of the land, stories of the people, stories we've forgotten and how dangerous that forgetfulness can be, having read the third book I can humbly assume that Garner felt the same.
Is this book for everyone? No. Is this book for die-hard fans of the originals hoping to recapture childhood magic and wonder? Not all of them, no. Is this book an absolute treasure? Most assuredly.
reading_on_the_road's review against another edition
3.0
I'm not entirely sure what I think of this book yet, so I've given it an 'average' rating as a holding pattern - I certainly didn't dislike it, but it will take time to digest and understand. It's certainly beautifully written.
pers's review against another edition
2.0
A very intense and strange sort of book. I've read Garner's adult fiction before so had some inkling that it wouldn't be a straight-forward sort of narrative, but in fact, I'd call this experimental...
philippurserhallard's review against another edition
5.0
CAREFUL: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS.
Boneland is essentially the story of the psychoanalysis of Colin, the male co-protagonist of The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath -- now an adult of indeterminate middle age, working as a radio astronomer at Jodrell Bank and living in a shack at Alderley Edge. Beyond a few significant flashbacks he has no memory of his childhood adventures, but he retains the trauma of them, especially the disappearance of his twin sister Susan.
Boneland takes place in the same landscape as the earlier Alderley books, but it is no longer the haunt of elves, dwarves and wizards. This book's fantastical elements arise more subtly from Susan's implicit fate (only foreshadowed in The Moon of Gomrath, although Colin's reading of the outcome is convincing in the light of what we saw there), and what emerges as the unusual nature of his analyst. There's also a series of time-hopping reversions to the prehistoric life of a man who turns out to be a Homo erectus shaman also inhabiting Cheshire, seeking a successor to his post of observing and thus maintaining the world, whose relation to the main narrative is definite but elusive.
Though of no great length, Boneland is a dense, slippery text which starts off close to incomprehensible but becomes crystal clear as one learns to inhabit the storytelling. That's the kind of reading experience I always find rewarding, but it's not the light read its predecessors were.
In fact, it reminded me of nothing so much as the revisionist texts which reinterpret much-loved works of children's fantasy through a filter of adult understanding and knowledge: Lev Grossman's Magicians sequence and Neil Gaiman's "The Problem of Susan" (both dealing with the Narnia books) spring most readily to mind, but one could also cite Alan Moore's Lost Girls (Alice, Peter Pan, Oz) or Geoff Ryman's Was (Oz).
In most such stories, adventures are re-examined as traumatic, paradigm-shaking experiences which can neither be revisited nor fully shared, but which will colour the rest of the adventurer's life; child protagonists are followed into their problematic adulthood, with the psychological fallout of their pasts unflinchingly surveyed; and parental figures, even God-analogues, are interrogated and found wanting in benevolence and responsibility.
Boneland is exactly that kind of revisitation of past innocence with a cynical half-century of hindsight -- indeed, the Alderly books are of essentially the same vintage as the Narnia books, with less than half a decade separating Weirdstone (1960) from The Last Battle (1956). However, Boneland has the unique qualification that it's not a piece of sophisticated fanfic based around the Alderley books, but the authentic work of their original author. If CS Lewis had survived until 2008 and suddenly written an eighth Narnia book at the age of 110, it would have been comparable.
The original books are essential reading for fully understanding Garner's own Problem of Susan (although there's one non-revelation which might have been more effective if read in isolation from them). The primary source of Colin's trauma particularly makes no sense without such background knowledge: suffice it to say that what Colin thinks of as a curse may be, given its source, the nearest thing available to a blessing. The narrative is rife with this kind of unresolved moral inversion, however, and in the end the subjective ambiguity of Colin's childhood experiences grows to dominate the book.
Although I loved the Alderley books as a child, I'm ashamed to say that I've not actually read Alan Garner's other adult novels, nor even his other children's novels, Elidor, The Owl Service and Red Shift. My parents told me at the age of 10ish that they'd be too difficult for me, and I somehow never caught up with them later in life. I intend to rectify this soon.
Boneland is essentially the story of the psychoanalysis of Colin, the male co-protagonist of The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath -- now an adult of indeterminate middle age, working as a radio astronomer at Jodrell Bank and living in a shack at Alderley Edge. Beyond a few significant flashbacks he has no memory of his childhood adventures, but he retains the trauma of them, especially the disappearance of his twin sister Susan.
Boneland takes place in the same landscape as the earlier Alderley books, but it is no longer the haunt of elves, dwarves and wizards. This book's fantastical elements arise more subtly from Susan's implicit fate (only foreshadowed in The Moon of Gomrath, although Colin's reading of the outcome is convincing in the light of what we saw there), and what emerges as the unusual nature of his analyst. There's also a series of time-hopping reversions to the prehistoric life of a man who turns out to be a Homo erectus shaman also inhabiting Cheshire, seeking a successor to his post of observing and thus maintaining the world, whose relation to the main narrative is definite but elusive.
Though of no great length, Boneland is a dense, slippery text which starts off close to incomprehensible but becomes crystal clear as one learns to inhabit the storytelling. That's the kind of reading experience I always find rewarding, but it's not the light read its predecessors were.
In fact, it reminded me of nothing so much as the revisionist texts which reinterpret much-loved works of children's fantasy through a filter of adult understanding and knowledge: Lev Grossman's Magicians sequence and Neil Gaiman's "The Problem of Susan" (both dealing with the Narnia books) spring most readily to mind, but one could also cite Alan Moore's Lost Girls (Alice, Peter Pan, Oz) or Geoff Ryman's Was (Oz).
In most such stories, adventures are re-examined as traumatic, paradigm-shaking experiences which can neither be revisited nor fully shared, but which will colour the rest of the adventurer's life; child protagonists are followed into their problematic adulthood, with the psychological fallout of their pasts unflinchingly surveyed; and parental figures, even God-analogues, are interrogated and found wanting in benevolence and responsibility.
Boneland is exactly that kind of revisitation of past innocence with a cynical half-century of hindsight -- indeed, the Alderly books are of essentially the same vintage as the Narnia books, with less than half a decade separating Weirdstone (1960) from The Last Battle (1956). However, Boneland has the unique qualification that it's not a piece of sophisticated fanfic based around the Alderley books, but the authentic work of their original author. If CS Lewis had survived until 2008 and suddenly written an eighth Narnia book at the age of 110, it would have been comparable.
The original books are essential reading for fully understanding Garner's own Problem of Susan (although there's one non-revelation which might have been more effective if read in isolation from them). The primary source of Colin's trauma particularly makes no sense without such background knowledge: suffice it to say that what Colin thinks of as a curse may be, given its source, the nearest thing available to a blessing. The narrative is rife with this kind of unresolved moral inversion, however, and in the end the subjective ambiguity of Colin's childhood experiences grows to dominate the book.
Although I loved the Alderley books as a child, I'm ashamed to say that I've not actually read Alan Garner's other adult novels, nor even his other children's novels, Elidor, The Owl Service and Red Shift. My parents told me at the age of 10ish that they'd be too difficult for me, and I somehow never caught up with them later in life. I intend to rectify this soon.
nigellicus's review against another edition
5.0
Growing up is weird, and can seem quite sad, especially when you remember the things that used to ring and resonate and you can almost remember what the ring and the resonance sounded like but not why it set your nerves on fire and filled your head with light. I suppose they were simple things in their way. Magic. Adventure. Heroes. Villains. Whether it's age or the world, such things don't quite hold the thrill they used to, or the thrill seems cheapened by camp and over-saturation and the acute knowledge of how dreary reality can be.
But maybe it's not supposed to be quite like that. We assume as we grow that we put magic aside and sigh and set our shoulders and stride in the grey light of adulthood, and that fantasy and adventure and romance are now cheap escape routes from the grey. But there is more than one sort of knowledge, isn't there? As we grow, we acquire the tools we need to live. Language. Skills. Strength. Learning. perhaps within those tools are deeper, more profound consolations and magics.
Alan Garner wrote two children's novels: The Weirdstone Of Brisingamen and The Moon Of Gomrath. They were wildly popular, and I know I wore my copies out with rereading. They were an odd mix; old-fashioned, inventive but somewhat conventional children's stories imbued with deeper, darker roots into folklore and landscape. The adventure narrative dominated, though, and they were quite thrilling and exciting reads, for all the slight tingle of unease they left when completed. The conventional narrative was to shrink and the unease to grow through Garner's subsequent novels: Elidor and The Owl Service, until with Red Shift he broke with linear narrative completely and jumbled time and place and memory and history and myth and wove them into an extraordinary, disorienting form.
Garner does not seem to have retained much fondness for Weirdstone or Gomrath, and has a tendency to disparage them. It was a surprise, therefore, to discover that they were the first two volumes of a trilogy, and he was finally, decades later, going to complete it.
Boneland is not an adventure narrative of heroes and magic. Boneland is, if anything, almost an apology for those first two books, addressed to the landscape they exploited, the myths, the people the community and the history they, perhaps, cheapened. It is an author coming to terms with his own beginnings, both as a person as an author. And it is an offering to the reader, hopefully the reader who grew up with those two books, of a reading experience that is at once harsher, more difficult, less fantastical, much more uneasy and ambiguous, and yet also deeper, richer, broader, invoking the lost memories of deep time and the unfathomable vastness of the entire universe, while reaffirming the debt, the ties and the need for a deep rooting in a a home place.
In Boneland, Colin cannot leave Alderley Edge, cannot spend a night out of its sight or else it will vanish and the world will end. The wisdom of this book is that this is both something true and a metaphor for something else, and though we use different tools to examine the truth and the metaphor, they do not have to be divided. And so Garner offers his readers, who thrilled as children to magic and adventure, a conception of the adult world that encompasses its dreariness and a form of magic and adventure that cannot be cheapened or made camp.
But maybe it's not supposed to be quite like that. We assume as we grow that we put magic aside and sigh and set our shoulders and stride in the grey light of adulthood, and that fantasy and adventure and romance are now cheap escape routes from the grey. But there is more than one sort of knowledge, isn't there? As we grow, we acquire the tools we need to live. Language. Skills. Strength. Learning. perhaps within those tools are deeper, more profound consolations and magics.
Alan Garner wrote two children's novels: The Weirdstone Of Brisingamen and The Moon Of Gomrath. They were wildly popular, and I know I wore my copies out with rereading. They were an odd mix; old-fashioned, inventive but somewhat conventional children's stories imbued with deeper, darker roots into folklore and landscape. The adventure narrative dominated, though, and they were quite thrilling and exciting reads, for all the slight tingle of unease they left when completed. The conventional narrative was to shrink and the unease to grow through Garner's subsequent novels: Elidor and The Owl Service, until with Red Shift he broke with linear narrative completely and jumbled time and place and memory and history and myth and wove them into an extraordinary, disorienting form.
Garner does not seem to have retained much fondness for Weirdstone or Gomrath, and has a tendency to disparage them. It was a surprise, therefore, to discover that they were the first two volumes of a trilogy, and he was finally, decades later, going to complete it.
Boneland is not an adventure narrative of heroes and magic. Boneland is, if anything, almost an apology for those first two books, addressed to the landscape they exploited, the myths, the people the community and the history they, perhaps, cheapened. It is an author coming to terms with his own beginnings, both as a person as an author. And it is an offering to the reader, hopefully the reader who grew up with those two books, of a reading experience that is at once harsher, more difficult, less fantastical, much more uneasy and ambiguous, and yet also deeper, richer, broader, invoking the lost memories of deep time and the unfathomable vastness of the entire universe, while reaffirming the debt, the ties and the need for a deep rooting in a a home place.
In Boneland, Colin cannot leave Alderley Edge, cannot spend a night out of its sight or else it will vanish and the world will end. The wisdom of this book is that this is both something true and a metaphor for something else, and though we use different tools to examine the truth and the metaphor, they do not have to be divided. And so Garner offers his readers, who thrilled as children to magic and adventure, a conception of the adult world that encompasses its dreariness and a form of magic and adventure that cannot be cheapened or made camp.
orlathewitch's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
This was a grown up novel of my childhood favourites. The Weirdstone of Brisingermen and the Moon of Gomrath are like the foundations stones of me as a person. This was ending that story and I don't know whether to be over-joyed and grief-stricken.
Susan and I went through so much together and as much as you can love anyone who is not real I love her. We shared the same fears and bitterness and confusion and anguishes. We stared out at the same stars and landscapes waiting to be found by our adventure.
But Boneland was Colin's story not hers. All I know now that I did not know before is that Susan found her way to her stars. I don't know if I'm happy or sad about that either.
Colin talks about science and myth holding equal importance but existing in difference demensions. You cannot use a telescope to find a metaphor but that does not mean that it is not real or that it does not have power. Alan Garner has been my favourite author for a long time. This has not changed even though this story was so different from the ones he told in the 1960s. It makes me sad because I grew up too and I'll never be the girl who first listened to my mother read those books again.
But read it if you've read the others. This is not a follow on, it's a look back by you and Colin in fear and wonder.
Susan and I went through so much together and as much as you can love anyone who is not real I love her. We shared the same fears and bitterness and confusion and anguishes. We stared out at the same stars and landscapes waiting to be found by our adventure.
But Boneland was Colin's story not hers. All I know now that I did not know before is that Susan found her way to her stars. I don't know if I'm happy or sad about that either.
Colin talks about science and myth holding equal importance but existing in difference demensions. You cannot use a telescope to find a metaphor but that does not mean that it is not real or that it does not have power. Alan Garner has been my favourite author for a long time. This has not changed even though this story was so different from the ones he told in the 1960s. It makes me sad because I grew up too and I'll never be the girl who first listened to my mother read those books again.
But read it if you've read the others. This is not a follow on, it's a look back by you and Colin in fear and wonder.
arbieroo's review against another edition
4.0
This is a strange book - which came as no surprise, as Garner's novels have been going from strange to stranger since [b:The Owl Service|83829|The Owl Service |Alan Garner|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1328875903s/83829.jpg|80927]. Here we have a third volume of a childrens' fantasy sequence ([b:The Weirdstone of Brisingamen|694997|The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (Tales of Alderley, #1)|Alan Garner|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1177345171s/694997.jpg|279305] and [b:The Moon of Gomrath|694942|The Moon of Gomrath (Tales of Alderley, #2)|Alan Garner|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1177344653s/694942.jpg|1219230]) - but this is most definitely not aimed at the traditional childrens' market - it's squarely aimed at adult readers, perhaps the readers who read Garner's most famous works as kids, like me, and somehow or another turned into adults in the mean time. So that's pretty odd - I can't think of another trilogy where that happens! But that's just the start of the weirdness.
The book alternates narrative passages and dream sequences. I've read numerous novels with occasional dream sequences and heard of a few that are entirely dreams and read one or two dream-vision poems but I can think of no other novel where dreams occupy such a high proportion of the text without being a dream throughout. So that's unusual, too - but the dreams themselves are strange. Well, all dreams are strange when examined in the cold light of morning, having woken, right? But these are even stranger - they read like Shamanistic spirit journeys - which were generally induced hallucinations. And hallucinations and dreams aren't really the same thing. Then there's the ending. Garner endings have been getting progressively more bonkers, cryptic and inscrutable since [b:Red Shift|307220|Red Shift|Alan Garner|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1173593682s/307220.jpg|298190]. This one is somewhat different from those but no less shocking and baffling, though many things are also made clear. There are some clues that something even more weird than the obvious weirdness is going on - enough foreshadowing if you are paying attention to make it clear that Garner knew what he was doing from the outset - which is no surprise. Garner is a very intelligent writer and he is discussing something interesting here, about truth and story and science and myth and magic.
The story is a little difficult to get into - it took me about 40p - because initially there's no discernible plot and the dream sequences are surreal and a little difficult whilst occupying a higher proportion of the text earlier on - so it's necessary to persevere a bit if you want to find out what happened to Colin after the Moon of Gomrath has passed. But I strongly recommend you do, if you ever liked a Garner story when you were a child.
The book alternates narrative passages and dream sequences. I've read numerous novels with occasional dream sequences and heard of a few that are entirely dreams and read one or two dream-vision poems but I can think of no other novel where dreams occupy such a high proportion of the text without being a dream throughout. So that's unusual, too - but the dreams themselves are strange. Well, all dreams are strange when examined in the cold light of morning, having woken, right? But these are even stranger - they read like Shamanistic spirit journeys - which were generally induced hallucinations. And hallucinations and dreams aren't really the same thing. Then there's the ending. Garner endings have been getting progressively more bonkers, cryptic and inscrutable since [b:Red Shift|307220|Red Shift|Alan Garner|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1173593682s/307220.jpg|298190]. This one is somewhat different from those but no less shocking and baffling, though many things are also made clear. There are some clues that something even more weird than the obvious weirdness is going on - enough foreshadowing if you are paying attention to make it clear that Garner knew what he was doing from the outset - which is no surprise. Garner is a very intelligent writer and he is discussing something interesting here, about truth and story and science and myth and magic.
The story is a little difficult to get into - it took me about 40p - because initially there's no discernible plot and the dream sequences are surreal and a little difficult whilst occupying a higher proportion of the text earlier on - so it's necessary to persevere a bit if you want to find out what happened to Colin after the Moon of Gomrath has passed. But I strongly recommend you do, if you ever liked a Garner story when you were a child.
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