Review – Alan GARNER – “The Stone Book Quartet”

Year Published: - 1983
Where the book was from:- My own copy
ISBN: - 0 00 184282 X
Pages: - 224pp
Genre: - Children’s stories;
Location:- Cheshire, England
How I came across it: - Bought in a library sale
Rating: - ***** ****
One sentence summary:- A combination of four previously published books which together make up a wonderful dialect-laden story of crafts people and their roots in the earth.

General Comments:
“It is a miniature masterpiece and, like all great miniatures, is staggering in what its limits contain.” Signal.
The quartet of books that make up this anthology are The Stone Book; Granny Reardun; The Aimer Gate; and Tom Fobble’s Day. They were originally published between 1976 and 1978. I first came across Alan Garner when working in Page Moss library in 1974 – at which time I worked my way through a number of children’s authors. By the time these four came out I had moved on – in more ways than one – but am delighted to have rediscovered him. The language and style are unique, bringing a combination of earthy dialect and a succinctness of language that compresses many thoughts and ideas into brief phrases.

Alan GARNER was born in Congleton in Cheshire in October 1934. He was brought up on Alderley and now lives with his wife and family in a mediaeval timber-framed house near the Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope, between Congleton and Alderley. He went to Magdalen College, Oxford.

Cheshire and its mythology have had a profound effect on Garner's writing. His interest in history and archaeology, and his own local discoveries, have been the seed of many ideas he has worked out in his books. His first three books, The Wierdstone of Brisingamen, The Moon of Gomrath and Elidor have become children's favourites. But it was his fourth book, 'The Owl Service' that undoubtedly brought Alan Garner to everyone's attention. It won the Guardian Award and the Carnegie Medal . In 1995 'The Stone Book' was awarded the Phoenix Award by the Children's Literature Association in the USA.