What do you think?
Rate this book
Collected Folk Tales
From the author of the Booker Prize-shortlisted Treacle Walker and the Carnegie Medal and Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize-winning classic, The Owl Service
The definitive collection of traditional British folk tales, selected and retold by the renowned Alan Garner.
Following on from the fiftieth anniversary of Alan Garner’s seminal fantasy classic, THE WEIRDSTONE OF BRISINGAMEN, here are collected all of Alan’s folk tales, told with his unique storytelling skill and inimitably clear voice. Essential reading for young and old alike.
Among the stories collected here • Kate Crackernuts• Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree• Yallery Brown
The definitive collection of traditional British folk tales, selected and retold by the renowned Alan Garner.
Following on from the fiftieth anniversary of Alan Garner’s seminal fantasy classic, THE WEIRDSTONE OF BRISINGAMEN, here are collected all of Alan’s folk tales, told with his unique storytelling skill and inimitably clear voice. Essential reading for young and old alike.
Among the stories collected here • Kate Crackernuts• Gold-Tree and Silver-Tree• Yallery Brown
337 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 27, 2011
84 people are currently reading
6795 people want to read
About the author
Alan Garner
80 books749 followersAlan Garner OBE (born 17 October 1934) is an English novelist who is best known for his children's fantasy novels and his retellings of traditional British folk tales. His work is firmly rooted in the landscape, history and folklore of his native county of Cheshire, North West England, being set in the region and making use of the native Cheshire dialect.
Born into a working-class family in Congleton, Cheshire, Garner grew up around the nearby town of Alderley Edge, and spent much of his youth in the wooded area known locally as 'The Edge', where he gained an early interest in the folklore of the region. Studying at Manchester Grammar School and then Oxford University, in 1957 he moved to the nearby village of Blackden, where he bought and renovated an Early Modern building known as Toad Hall. His first novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, was published in 1960. A children's fantasy novel set on the Edge, it incorporated elements of local folklore in its plot and characters. Garner completed a sequel, The Moon of Gomrath (1963), but left the third book of the trilogy he had envisioned. Instead he produced a string of further fantasy novels, Elidor (1965), The Owl Service (1967) and Red Shift (1973).
Turning away from fantasy as a genre, Garner produced The Stone Book Quartet (1979), a series of four short novellas detailing a day in the life of four generations of his family. He also published a series of British folk tales which he had rewritten in a series of books entitled Alan Garner's Fairy Tales of Gold (1979), Alan Garner's Book of British Fairy Tales (1984) and A Bag of Moonshine (1986). In his subsequent novels, Strandloper (1996) and Thursbitch (2003), he continued writing tales revolving around Cheshire, although without the fantasy elements which had characterised his earlier work. In 2012, he finally published a third book in the Weirdstone trilogy.
Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Garner
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Born into a working-class family in Congleton, Cheshire, Garner grew up around the nearby town of Alderley Edge, and spent much of his youth in the wooded area known locally as 'The Edge', where he gained an early interest in the folklore of the region. Studying at Manchester Grammar School and then Oxford University, in 1957 he moved to the nearby village of Blackden, where he bought and renovated an Early Modern building known as Toad Hall. His first novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, was published in 1960. A children's fantasy novel set on the Edge, it incorporated elements of local folklore in its plot and characters. Garner completed a sequel, The Moon of Gomrath (1963), but left the third book of the trilogy he had envisioned. Instead he produced a string of further fantasy novels, Elidor (1965), The Owl Service (1967) and Red Shift (1973).
Turning away from fantasy as a genre, Garner produced The Stone Book Quartet (1979), a series of four short novellas detailing a day in the life of four generations of his family. He also published a series of British folk tales which he had rewritten in a series of books entitled Alan Garner's Fairy Tales of Gold (1979), Alan Garner's Book of British Fairy Tales (1984) and A Bag of Moonshine (1986). In his subsequent novels, Strandloper (1996) and Thursbitch (2003), he continued writing tales revolving around Cheshire, although without the fantasy elements which had characterised his earlier work. In 2012, he finally published a third book in the Weirdstone trilogy.
Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Garner
Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews
December 5, 2013
"There was a hill that ate people," begins the first story. Just like that. "Far away, and a long time ago, on a high mountain, without trees for shelter, without body or arms for anything, on spindly legs, ran Great Head," begins another story. We are in the realm of folk tales, where we are told what happened, and we must simply go along with it.
There is something of the national treasure about Alan Garner. He has been writing excellent books for more than 50 years. He was, I suspect, the first person to write what now we would describe as urban fantasies. His prose at its best (and it is pretty much always at its best) seems inevitable, and pushes reviewers into using similes that compare it to rocks and gorges and unchanging natural formations.
As I read the Collected Folk Tales there was a feeling of happy familiarity from the first, a déjà vu, as if I knew these stories, some of them intimately. My assumption as I read was that I had encountered most of them in other forms and other places (folk tales are told and retold, after all), but then, when I finished reading, I looked at the copyright page, and realised that more than half the stories had been published in 1969 as The Hamish Hamilton Book of Goblins. I read it when I was nine, and reread it often. I could remember it in my local library, remembered taking it off to a quiet corner, remembered how much I had loved it.
It is peculiar to encounter a book half of which was assembled up to 40 years after the rest and not to be able to see any obvious difference in the writing or the writer. The prose in the old stories feels as inevitable as the new. The stories are written in a variety of voices, emulating the places the tales came from, but the prose is always spare and hard, not a word wasted, not a word out of place.
Here we have stories from Britain and Ireland and all over the world, retold with assurance. Some of the high points that were not in the original collection include "The Flying Children", a story of lies and sex and supernatural revenge and murder that I first encountered in Neil Philip's Penguin Book of English Folk Tales. It is a story that makes authors want to retell it (I shoehorned it into Sandman). Then there's a tale Garner calls "Iram Biram", which Philip called "The Pear Drum" when he collected it, and which is a curiosity in itself, because it began as a nightmarish Victorian short story by Lucy Clifford called "The New Mother". Garner strips it down to its elements. It's an act of literary ventriloquism that illuminates the oral and folk tradition. Two girls named Blue Eyes and Turkey are tempted by a wild girl to be naughty, with the promise of a gift of a mysterious "pear drum". They are not naughty enough to get the drum, but are still so naughty that their mother leaves, and a new mother, with glass eyes and a wooden tail, takes her place.
Garner goes beyond the original ending, playing with the sound and the meaning of words:
There were no lamps lit, but in the glow of the fire they saw through the window the glitter glitter green glass of a mother's eye. They heard the thump; thump; thump of a wooden tail.
Iram, biram, brendon bo
Where did all the children go?
They went to the east, they went to the west
They went where the cuckoo has its nest.
Iram. Biram. Brendon. Bo.
And the Wild Girl wept.
Garner makes up a poem, and adds the haunting image of the Wild Girl weeping as a way of closing the tale, thus moving it somewhere entirely new, away from Victorian nursery horror and into the realm of the twice-told tale.
The book itself has a core of goblin stories – but a goblin can be anything, and Garner's own preferences seems to be for moments of the inexplicable. So many of the tales lack explanation for the events in them, as if the stories were the lyrics of folk songs, and the true meaning is in the music. There is an essay in here on the roots of the fairy folk, and who they really were, or might have been. There are a few dialect pieces, written, Garner says, in the voice of his blacksmith grandfather. There are poems: some collected from "Anon" and the dead, others by Garner himself, my favourite being "R.I.P", which begins: "A girl in our village makes love in the churchyard. / She doesn't mind who, but it must be the churchyard," and continues, lusty and honest to its bitter-hopeful end.
There is a version of Valmiki's Ramayana. There are Norse gods, Algonquin revenge magic and a hero's odyssey from Ireland to a series of magical islands.
This Collected Folk Tales is, by definition and by temperament, a patchwork, and reading it is like entering a rag and bone shop in which every object has been polished up and repaired and made fit for use, while always leaving in the cracks and dents that show that the goods have had years of use already. With the exception of some of the poems, there is nothing new or shining here, and the book is all the better for it. If I had small children, or a class, I would read to them from it.
And if, by the time I have grandchildren, there are still public libraries, as I hope there will be, I trust that they will find this book themselves in one (for it will be all the better for not being given or suggested or recommended to them by an adult), and take it to a quiet corner and read.
This review originally went up at http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/...
There is something of the national treasure about Alan Garner. He has been writing excellent books for more than 50 years. He was, I suspect, the first person to write what now we would describe as urban fantasies. His prose at its best (and it is pretty much always at its best) seems inevitable, and pushes reviewers into using similes that compare it to rocks and gorges and unchanging natural formations.
As I read the Collected Folk Tales there was a feeling of happy familiarity from the first, a déjà vu, as if I knew these stories, some of them intimately. My assumption as I read was that I had encountered most of them in other forms and other places (folk tales are told and retold, after all), but then, when I finished reading, I looked at the copyright page, and realised that more than half the stories had been published in 1969 as The Hamish Hamilton Book of Goblins. I read it when I was nine, and reread it often. I could remember it in my local library, remembered taking it off to a quiet corner, remembered how much I had loved it.
It is peculiar to encounter a book half of which was assembled up to 40 years after the rest and not to be able to see any obvious difference in the writing or the writer. The prose in the old stories feels as inevitable as the new. The stories are written in a variety of voices, emulating the places the tales came from, but the prose is always spare and hard, not a word wasted, not a word out of place.
Here we have stories from Britain and Ireland and all over the world, retold with assurance. Some of the high points that were not in the original collection include "The Flying Children", a story of lies and sex and supernatural revenge and murder that I first encountered in Neil Philip's Penguin Book of English Folk Tales. It is a story that makes authors want to retell it (I shoehorned it into Sandman). Then there's a tale Garner calls "Iram Biram", which Philip called "The Pear Drum" when he collected it, and which is a curiosity in itself, because it began as a nightmarish Victorian short story by Lucy Clifford called "The New Mother". Garner strips it down to its elements. It's an act of literary ventriloquism that illuminates the oral and folk tradition. Two girls named Blue Eyes and Turkey are tempted by a wild girl to be naughty, with the promise of a gift of a mysterious "pear drum". They are not naughty enough to get the drum, but are still so naughty that their mother leaves, and a new mother, with glass eyes and a wooden tail, takes her place.
Garner goes beyond the original ending, playing with the sound and the meaning of words:
There were no lamps lit, but in the glow of the fire they saw through the window the glitter glitter green glass of a mother's eye. They heard the thump; thump; thump of a wooden tail.
Iram, biram, brendon bo
Where did all the children go?
They went to the east, they went to the west
They went where the cuckoo has its nest.
Iram. Biram. Brendon. Bo.
And the Wild Girl wept.
Garner makes up a poem, and adds the haunting image of the Wild Girl weeping as a way of closing the tale, thus moving it somewhere entirely new, away from Victorian nursery horror and into the realm of the twice-told tale.
The book itself has a core of goblin stories – but a goblin can be anything, and Garner's own preferences seems to be for moments of the inexplicable. So many of the tales lack explanation for the events in them, as if the stories were the lyrics of folk songs, and the true meaning is in the music. There is an essay in here on the roots of the fairy folk, and who they really were, or might have been. There are a few dialect pieces, written, Garner says, in the voice of his blacksmith grandfather. There are poems: some collected from "Anon" and the dead, others by Garner himself, my favourite being "R.I.P", which begins: "A girl in our village makes love in the churchyard. / She doesn't mind who, but it must be the churchyard," and continues, lusty and honest to its bitter-hopeful end.
There is a version of Valmiki's Ramayana. There are Norse gods, Algonquin revenge magic and a hero's odyssey from Ireland to a series of magical islands.
This Collected Folk Tales is, by definition and by temperament, a patchwork, and reading it is like entering a rag and bone shop in which every object has been polished up and repaired and made fit for use, while always leaving in the cracks and dents that show that the goods have had years of use already. With the exception of some of the poems, there is nothing new or shining here, and the book is all the better for it. If I had small children, or a class, I would read to them from it.
And if, by the time I have grandchildren, there are still public libraries, as I hope there will be, I trust that they will find this book themselves in one (for it will be all the better for not being given or suggested or recommended to them by an adult), and take it to a quiet corner and read.
This review originally went up at http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/...
September 16, 2016
I started this book last night as many others over the past few days ... my problem is that I can't seem to finish them (I'm in a funk) so I thought short fairy tales would cure me. And they did - in fact, I got more than I ever imagined I would!
I had never heard of Alan Garner before but apparently he is a very well-known British author for children's fantasy books,all with mythological roots, and even Neil Gaiman has praised him a couple of times (no actual surprise since he loves mythology too).
Not to mention this nice comment by Philip Pullman on the back of my edition:
I quite agree.
Too few kids are still told about the old fairy tales (a topic Brad and I discussed only last night when we were talking about the Kalevala - I bet many here don't know what that is - and how most myths are somehow either descended from one another or at least make us see how related different languages and cultures are) and not many books are still telling the tales of old. Sure, some survive in popular works by Tolkien, Gaiman and Garner or even thanks to comicbook adaptations for the big screen. But most are completely lost; often also due to the fact that they were oral histories, only rarely recorded in written form. Books like this one are trying to help these stories survive.
This book contains 18 to me previously unknown stories and poems (some retold by Garner, some penned by the man himself). I always like discovering tales I've never known before because it is exciting; like standing before a cave in the dark, not knowing what to expect inside (a sense of adventure overcomes me every time I open such a book). :D
Some of the stories and poems are about well-known characters such as Loki and Baldur while others are about obscure ones like "rabbit" and "Shick-Shack"; some are from British folklore while there even is a Mayan legend (Vukub-Cakix) in it. Some at least have recognizable themes (one story, for example, is about the flood and vanishing/re-creation of land), but all are fantastic and let the imagination soar and one can feel the author's enthusiasm for fairy tales.
Thus, I was thrilled to discover so many new stories and was thoroughly entertained - not to mention the enchantment of the writing style that matched the magical theme of the book!
I had never heard of Alan Garner before but apparently he is a very well-known British author for children's fantasy books,all with mythological roots, and even Neil Gaiman has praised him a couple of times (no actual surprise since he loves mythology too).
Not to mention this nice comment by Philip Pullman on the back of my edition:
The great collections of British folk tales, such as this one, should be treated in two ways: first, they should be bound in gold and brought out on ceremonial occasions as national treasures; and second, they should be printed in editions of hundreds of thousands, at the public espense, and given away free to every young teacher and every new parent.
I quite agree.
Too few kids are still told about the old fairy tales (a topic Brad and I discussed only last night when we were talking about the Kalevala - I bet many here don't know what that is - and how most myths are somehow either descended from one another or at least make us see how related different languages and cultures are) and not many books are still telling the tales of old. Sure, some survive in popular works by Tolkien, Gaiman and Garner or even thanks to comicbook adaptations for the big screen. But most are completely lost; often also due to the fact that they were oral histories, only rarely recorded in written form. Books like this one are trying to help these stories survive.
This book contains 18 to me previously unknown stories and poems (some retold by Garner, some penned by the man himself). I always like discovering tales I've never known before because it is exciting; like standing before a cave in the dark, not knowing what to expect inside (a sense of adventure overcomes me every time I open such a book). :D
Some of the stories and poems are about well-known characters such as Loki and Baldur while others are about obscure ones like "rabbit" and "Shick-Shack"; some are from British folklore while there even is a Mayan legend (Vukub-Cakix) in it. Some at least have recognizable themes (one story, for example, is about the flood and vanishing/re-creation of land), but all are fantastic and let the imagination soar and one can feel the author's enthusiasm for fairy tales.
Thus, I was thrilled to discover so many new stories and was thoroughly entertained - not to mention the enchantment of the writing style that matched the magical theme of the book!
November 20, 2021
I've wanted to read this book ever since I read Neil Gaiman's review of it here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... and he later gave me a direct--albeit brief--answer to a question I addressed to him in a starstruck way.
I didn't get as massive a dose of déjà vu as Neil did, for the simple reason that I hadn't read the collection (or rather a part thereof) in an earlier manifestation. One or two of the stories did seem familiar though. And I got a really strong twinge from "Assipattle and the Mester Stoorworm" although I'm not exactly sure where I've read it before.
We are in a world where we witness the marvelous, the magical, the mythological and sometimes the macabre without raising so much as an eyebrow. I don't know if Mr. Spock could have done the same; I can imagine him getting fatigued from the constant elevation of a single brow and then offering a few dry remarks on the general lack of logic of the human race. However, I might say in rebuttal that many of the tales have an inner logic of their own. As in many fairy tales, the rules must be followed and dire consequences arise when they are broken.
I found some of the stories funny, others sad, and still others really creepy; occasionally, as in "Yallery Brown," all three of these reactions were elicited by the same story. I also found the somewhat haphazard arrangement a bit disconcerting, as it sometimes gave me the feeling of lurching unexpectedly from one culture to another. However, in general I found this collection... fascinating.
I didn't get as massive a dose of déjà vu as Neil did, for the simple reason that I hadn't read the collection (or rather a part thereof) in an earlier manifestation. One or two of the stories did seem familiar though. And I got a really strong twinge from "Assipattle and the Mester Stoorworm" although I'm not exactly sure where I've read it before.
We are in a world where we witness the marvelous, the magical, the mythological and sometimes the macabre without raising so much as an eyebrow. I don't know if Mr. Spock could have done the same; I can imagine him getting fatigued from the constant elevation of a single brow and then offering a few dry remarks on the general lack of logic of the human race. However, I might say in rebuttal that many of the tales have an inner logic of their own. As in many fairy tales, the rules must be followed and dire consequences arise when they are broken.
I found some of the stories funny, others sad, and still others really creepy; occasionally, as in "Yallery Brown," all three of these reactions were elicited by the same story. I also found the somewhat haphazard arrangement a bit disconcerting, as it sometimes gave me the feeling of lurching unexpectedly from one culture to another. However, in general I found this collection... fascinating.
September 26, 2012
Lovely collection of folk stories from all over the world, all jumbled together in quite a lovely mix. There's old stories from time past knowing from Britain alongside the story of Rama and Sita, alongside the tales of the Norse gods. I'm sure there're probably criticisms of such a jumble of stories, but the fact that they can sit more or less easily together in this collection -- as easily as folk tales ever do sit, which isn't very -- says something about the way people tell stories, the same the world over. And Alan Garner did manage to capture the oral nature of the stories, as originally told, in most cases.
February 4, 2020
This was pure magic.
This is going to sound odd, perhaps, but reading this made me really proud of where I come from. Because of my family, and where I live (in America), I have a very diverse heritage. Holding this book was the equivalent of holding my ancestry in my hands. Tales from North America, Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, Zambia, Scandinavia, and Russia. Nordic stories about mischievous Loki, Irish faeries tricking mortals into an eternity of misery, strong Native American warriors nursing broken hearts, King Arthur and his cursed pride...It filled me with this delicious, cozy feeling that could only be described as magic.
It also made me realize the (age-old) superstitions my ancestors had carried with them through their posterity, away from their old countries and into this new one, have actually lasted for generations - even as their faith's changed; that odd combination of praying, and then simultaneously throwing a dash of salt over your shoulder so the evil spirits of the mool don't get you. I still can't open up an umbrella inside.
Some of my favorite stories that come to mind were:
-The Secret of the Commonwealth
-Loki
-Baldr the Bright
I have no doubt I'll be reading this and re-reading this for years to come.
Highly recommend!
This is going to sound odd, perhaps, but reading this made me really proud of where I come from. Because of my family, and where I live (in America), I have a very diverse heritage. Holding this book was the equivalent of holding my ancestry in my hands. Tales from North America, Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, Zambia, Scandinavia, and Russia. Nordic stories about mischievous Loki, Irish faeries tricking mortals into an eternity of misery, strong Native American warriors nursing broken hearts, King Arthur and his cursed pride...It filled me with this delicious, cozy feeling that could only be described as magic.
It also made me realize the (age-old) superstitions my ancestors had carried with them through their posterity, away from their old countries and into this new one, have actually lasted for generations - even as their faith's changed; that odd combination of praying, and then simultaneously throwing a dash of salt over your shoulder so the evil spirits of the mool don't get you. I still can't open up an umbrella inside.
Some of my favorite stories that come to mind were:
-The Secret of the Commonwealth
-Loki
-Baldr the Bright
I have no doubt I'll be reading this and re-reading this for years to come.
Highly recommend!
January 10, 2012
This book is not an entirely new collection from Garner nor is it his complete output of folk tales. Most of the pieces were originally published in 1969 under the title The Hamish Hamilton book of goblins which was later reprinted variously as: "A Book of Goblins" and "A Cavalcade of Goblins" which are all poor titles as the stories cover a wide range of topics only occasionally featuring Goblins.
Around a third of the present volume is made up of pieces that have never been collected before. The stories and poems range in length from 4 lines to 40 pages.
There's no getting away from it some of these stories are utterly baffling, I just couldn't see the point in quite a few, but in far more cases they are just wonderful.
Here are some, but not all of the very best:
Gobbleknoll
Tops or bottoms
Yallery Brown
Iram, Biram
Faithful John
Jack and the golden snuff box
The smoker
Loki
The flying childer
The green mist
However the highlight of the book for me was Garner's poem RIP.
If you enjoyed this, it might be worth mentioning Garner has over the years produced quite a number of other collections of folk tales, which are now sadly mostly out of print, but it might be worth trawling the secondhand bookshops and internet for:
The Guizer
The Lad of the Gad
Fairytales of Gold
Alan Garner's Book of British Fairy Tales
A Bag of Moonshine.
Around a third of the present volume is made up of pieces that have never been collected before. The stories and poems range in length from 4 lines to 40 pages.
There's no getting away from it some of these stories are utterly baffling, I just couldn't see the point in quite a few, but in far more cases they are just wonderful.
Here are some, but not all of the very best:
Gobbleknoll
Tops or bottoms
Yallery Brown
Iram, Biram
Faithful John
Jack and the golden snuff box
The smoker
Loki
The flying childer
The green mist
However the highlight of the book for me was Garner's poem RIP.
If you enjoyed this, it might be worth mentioning Garner has over the years produced quite a number of other collections of folk tales, which are now sadly mostly out of print, but it might be worth trawling the secondhand bookshops and internet for:
The Guizer
The Lad of the Gad
Fairytales of Gold
Alan Garner's Book of British Fairy Tales
A Bag of Moonshine.
May 18, 2012
Ok, I'm biased: I loved the author's books as a child and have reread them often as an adult. So when I saw this in the window of a local bookshop I stopped in my tracks. The book itself is beautiful, but what's inside is gold. From essays on faerie-folk and dark beasties, from strange, surreal Celtic voyages to dark and twisted poetry, Japanese tragedies and Native American fables, even a section of the Ramayana, every piece in this collection is valuable.
Anyone with a love of stories and storytelling - either the craft or just as a reader - would be well-served to read this. This is not academic - hell, I smiled frequently during the reading of certain tales. Oh, and although I found this in the children's section it's not really a book for kids. At least not young kids. This is not Disney, nor bowdlerised. Bad, violent things happen to children, and there is rape and seduction. These are tales as they should be - oral, visceral, charming and disturbing.
Anyone with a love of stories and storytelling - either the craft or just as a reader - would be well-served to read this. This is not academic - hell, I smiled frequently during the reading of certain tales. Oh, and although I found this in the children's section it's not really a book for kids. At least not young kids. This is not Disney, nor bowdlerised. Bad, violent things happen to children, and there is rape and seduction. These are tales as they should be - oral, visceral, charming and disturbing.
Read
January 2, 2024you could say that legends are the gossip of history.
had a good ol linguistic and folkloric time here. this loan hasn't expired yet, so WHOOPS, you get my bookmarks!!!! hiding them under a cut though because it is visually a bit unsightly (no real spoilers in this kind of thing tho)
LANGUAGE:
he took an arrow, and prayed to its indwelling god.
OTHER BITS N BOBS:
"hi!" says the wise woman. "none give, none have; red hand and lying lips!"
FOUR WAYS TO END:
and of her he was as glad as grass would be of rain.
༄
and, if they are not dead, they are living yet.
༄
baldur was gone, and blood had been shed: murder grew from murder, and grief from grief, and from these came war: a sword age: a wolf age: winter: and the world's end.
༄
"and that's all."
Read
September 25, 2024Why I read it: Bought it because........ I'm not sure, really. Read it because I wanted something that was more low-commitment than a novel, as a break.
Thoughts: Really enjoyed these! A very strange and eclectic collection, most of which I was wholly unfamiliar with. Of course I knew the whole Baldur's death thing, and Bash Tchelik has elements of Koshchei, and I think I'd read Hoichi the Earless before, and the Ramayana is the Ramayana, and I don't recognise Tarn Wethelan from the Arthurian cycle but then again, I also haven't read much of the Arthurian cycle and anyway, it feels legit. The important part is that the way these stories are told and/or retold, and the way they're interspersed with some really strange poems (some are the author's and some are not; for my money, R.I.P. is the best/funniest one), makes for some really enjoyable folk-reading.
My favourites of the lot: The Voyage of Maelduin (really strange, fantastical journey; may read a translation of the original text) + The Fort of Rathangan, Great Head and the Ten Brothers, Tarn Wethelan, Asrai, The Island of the Strong Door, The Smoker, R.I.P., Wae's Me, The Green Mist.
Would I read more from this author: Yes! I'd like to try some of his fiction, too, it's bound to be interesting.
Thoughts: Really enjoyed these! A very strange and eclectic collection, most of which I was wholly unfamiliar with. Of course I knew the whole Baldur's death thing, and Bash Tchelik has elements of Koshchei, and I think I'd read Hoichi the Earless before, and the Ramayana is the Ramayana, and I don't recognise Tarn Wethelan from the Arthurian cycle but then again, I also haven't read much of the Arthurian cycle and anyway, it feels legit. The important part is that the way these stories are told and/or retold, and the way they're interspersed with some really strange poems (some are the author's and some are not; for my money, R.I.P. is the best/funniest one), makes for some really enjoyable folk-reading.
My favourites of the lot: The Voyage of Maelduin (really strange, fantastical journey; may read a translation of the original text) + The Fort of Rathangan, Great Head and the Ten Brothers, Tarn Wethelan, Asrai, The Island of the Strong Door, The Smoker, R.I.P., Wae's Me, The Green Mist.
Would I read more from this author: Yes! I'd like to try some of his fiction, too, it's bound to be interesting.
February 17, 2014
This collection of beautifully told stories reminds us (those of us who grew up in the country, at least) of what it was like to hear these stories. I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s and I daresay most of the old country folk who told stories like these to me are dead, so it's Melancholy but reassuring to have them captured on paper.
As well as the very "spoken" diction, the brevity of these stories is notable. My favourite is "Faithful John" and it is only a few pages long. The stories of today may be epic, long, and packed with plots and twists - but these whittled down stories are just as rich when taken in the right context.
As well as the very "spoken" diction, the brevity of these stories is notable. My favourite is "Faithful John" and it is only a few pages long. The stories of today may be epic, long, and packed with plots and twists - but these whittled down stories are just as rich when taken in the right context.
Read
May 9, 2012Having a tough time with this one, wish I hadn't bothered buying it. BUT it is the 100th book I've bought for our Kindles (just thought I'd make a little note about that.
October 4, 2018
Patchy. Some good. Some dull.
October 26, 2021
3 stars, Metaphorosis Reviews
Summary
A collection of folk tales or fairy stories compiled and edited by Alan Garner, including stories from around the world, along with a handful of Garner's own poetry.
Review
I very much liked Alan Garner’s own books when I was young, and in the search for modern, e-versions, turned up this collection. Not Garner’s own work, of course (though that turns out to be only mostly true), but I still thought it would be interesting to see what stories he liked.
The result, unfortunately, is only mildly interesting. The stories are (with the exception of one taken from the Ramayana) generally short and easily digested, and they range fairly broadly around the world (though with a focus on Europe). Their brevity, unfortunately, works against them for adult or adolescent reading, but they might, especially with their frequent use of dialect, be fun reading for or to younger children.
A surprising inclusion is a number of speculative poems by Garner himself. I tend not to be a big fan of such poems, but these weren’t bad. I wouldn’t seek them out, but I thought they fit the collection well. According to the copyright page, the book itself draws heavily from the Garner-edited Hamish Hamilton Book of Goblins, taking roughly half the stories from there, along with new material.
If you’re looking for quick, lightly scary stories for young children, this book might suit you well. If you’re looking for stories more than bite-sized, look elsewhere.
Summary
A collection of folk tales or fairy stories compiled and edited by Alan Garner, including stories from around the world, along with a handful of Garner's own poetry.
Review
I very much liked Alan Garner’s own books when I was young, and in the search for modern, e-versions, turned up this collection. Not Garner’s own work, of course (though that turns out to be only mostly true), but I still thought it would be interesting to see what stories he liked.
The result, unfortunately, is only mildly interesting. The stories are (with the exception of one taken from the Ramayana) generally short and easily digested, and they range fairly broadly around the world (though with a focus on Europe). Their brevity, unfortunately, works against them for adult or adolescent reading, but they might, especially with their frequent use of dialect, be fun reading for or to younger children.
A surprising inclusion is a number of speculative poems by Garner himself. I tend not to be a big fan of such poems, but these weren’t bad. I wouldn’t seek them out, but I thought they fit the collection well. According to the copyright page, the book itself draws heavily from the Garner-edited Hamish Hamilton Book of Goblins, taking roughly half the stories from there, along with new material.
If you’re looking for quick, lightly scary stories for young children, this book might suit you well. If you’re looking for stories more than bite-sized, look elsewhere.
November 28, 2017
Si bien las historias tradicionales pueden ser mitos, leyendas, cuentos de hadas o cuentos populares. Este libro es sobre todo para cualquier persona que ama una historia por breve que esta sea e independientemente que esta sea épica o no, y aunque por naturaleza, el cuento popular se dirige al oído y su primer atractivo es para un oyente y no para un lector, estos no pierden su esencia y puedes detenerte a considerar cada matiz cultural, así el libro te lleva a lugares que van desde Guatemala, Canadá, Japón, India, Zambia, Inglaterra, Irlanda y Rusia ofreciéndote la oportunidad de entender un poco a través de su folklore su visión del mundo.
Por otro lado también se disfrutan algunas de sus historias enfocadas en el miedo cual si fueras un niño siendo asustado una noche antes de dormir. muchas son sus historias sin embargo mención especial para Yallery brown, Iram Biram, Hoichi the Earless, Bash Tchelik y The voyage of Maueldin.
Por otro lado también se disfrutan algunas de sus historias enfocadas en el miedo cual si fueras un niño siendo asustado una noche antes de dormir. muchas son sus historias sin embargo mención especial para Yallery brown, Iram Biram, Hoichi the Earless, Bash Tchelik y The voyage of Maueldin.
February 5, 2022
The one thing missing from this collection of folktales, that you would expect to find, is background information. Somewhat confusingly, you get none at all; you are simply flung into a crazy, haunting world with no context whatsoever. It works, to an extent, because it means that the stories retain their weirdness and sense of mystery, but it did mean I had to keep putting the book down every so often to Google the names and try and get some idea of the stories' origins.
The stories themselves are of every shape and size. Some haunting, some beautiful, some baffling, some short, some long. The longest, Ramayana, is a Hindu epic and is so dense with similar sounding names, crazy left-field plot twists and magic monkeys that I had to abandon it and come back to it once I had finished the others. The best, The Green Mist, the author saves till last; a spooky tale about spring, rebirth and death which sings with the power and wisdom of age.
The stories themselves are of every shape and size. Some haunting, some beautiful, some baffling, some short, some long. The longest, Ramayana, is a Hindu epic and is so dense with similar sounding names, crazy left-field plot twists and magic monkeys that I had to abandon it and come back to it once I had finished the others. The best, The Green Mist, the author saves till last; a spooky tale about spring, rebirth and death which sings with the power and wisdom of age.
March 14, 2023
Reading folk tales is like a reset for the fiction reader/writer's mind. It forces you to toss out any preconceived notions of plot or character and let the story and the occasional morality lesson wash over you. It's an almost psychedelic approach to reading a story. Garner's writing is wonderful. You can practically hear the creaky old man whispering these stories to you by a fire as a tree rattles against a window. These stories gently lead you down that line between fear and wonder that you thought you left in childhood, a similar place that the best Miyazaki films also send you to. The landscapes are always rich and you never know what sort of creature you might encounter. In this way, you can feel how folktales influenced writers like Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. I kept thinking about the Conan story THE TOWER OF THE ELEPHANT while reading.
Anyway, good stuff. highly recommend.
Anyway, good stuff. highly recommend.
February 19, 2023
3/5 - Gobbleknoll
2/5 - Shick-Shack
2/5 - Vukub-Cakix
2/5 - Tops or Bottoms
4/5 - The Voyage of Maelduin
3/5 - Willow
2/5 - Edward Frank and the Friendly Cow
3/5 - Yallery Brown
3/5 - Moowis
3/5 - The Lady of the Wood
4/5 - Bash Tchelik
3/5 - Iram, Biram
3/5 - The Goblin Spider
2/5 - The Silent Commonwealth
3/5 - The Adventures of Nera
2/5 - A Letter
3/5 - Great Head and the Ten Brothers
2/5 - Faithful John
2/5 - The Trade That No One Knows
2/5 - Jack and his Golden Snuff-box
1/5 - Tarn Wethelan
2/5 - Asrai
3/5 - Hoichi the Earless
3/5 - Ramayana
3/5 - The Smoker
3/5 - Wild Worms and Swooning Shadows
3/5 - Assipattle and the Mester Stoorworm
3/5 - The Barguest of Nidderdale
4/5 - Loki
2/5 - Baldur the Bright
1/5 - The Flying Childer
1/5 - Father, Wait for Me
2/5 - Glooskap
1/5 - The Wonderful Wood
2/5 - The Green Mist
2/5 - Shick-Shack
2/5 - Vukub-Cakix
2/5 - Tops or Bottoms
4/5 - The Voyage of Maelduin
3/5 - Willow
2/5 - Edward Frank and the Friendly Cow
3/5 - Yallery Brown
3/5 - Moowis
3/5 - The Lady of the Wood
4/5 - Bash Tchelik
3/5 - Iram, Biram
3/5 - The Goblin Spider
2/5 - The Silent Commonwealth
3/5 - The Adventures of Nera
2/5 - A Letter
3/5 - Great Head and the Ten Brothers
2/5 - Faithful John
2/5 - The Trade That No One Knows
2/5 - Jack and his Golden Snuff-box
1/5 - Tarn Wethelan
2/5 - Asrai
3/5 - Hoichi the Earless
3/5 - Ramayana
3/5 - The Smoker
3/5 - Wild Worms and Swooning Shadows
3/5 - Assipattle and the Mester Stoorworm
3/5 - The Barguest of Nidderdale
4/5 - Loki
2/5 - Baldur the Bright
1/5 - The Flying Childer
1/5 - Father, Wait for Me
2/5 - Glooskap
1/5 - The Wonderful Wood
2/5 - The Green Mist
November 15, 2024
Some of this was great. Some of it was really good, well written and adapted folk stories. And the other half was.... Barely readable.
I know it's a collection from different cultures and ages, I know it's going to be a bit off the beaten track. There's little explanations at the head of a handful of the stories to preface the unusual, to explain the history of this kind of story etc... and then there's another 15 stories with no explanation or preface that read like a first draft. Disjointed, chaotic, downright strange stuff occurs and then it says "and that's all", like the guy telling you the story has wandered off the point and forgotten how it ends.
Shout out to Edwin and the friendly cow though, that drunken adventure was great.
I know it's a collection from different cultures and ages, I know it's going to be a bit off the beaten track. There's little explanations at the head of a handful of the stories to preface the unusual, to explain the history of this kind of story etc... and then there's another 15 stories with no explanation or preface that read like a first draft. Disjointed, chaotic, downright strange stuff occurs and then it says "and that's all", like the guy telling you the story has wandered off the point and forgotten how it ends.
Shout out to Edwin and the friendly cow though, that drunken adventure was great.
February 15, 2025
I've had this on my TBR for so long I had almost given up hope that I would get to read it, but the library had a copy!!!!
I liked the range of folk tales from around the world, although a lot are from Great Britain, overall it was a good mix of different countries which is nice to read but I only ended up enjoying a handful of tales.
A lot of the stories are fairly short which works if reading 1-2 a night and by a younger audience because as I read a few stories a day, to pace them out, I felt that their shortness left me wanting for more details to fall deeper into the tale for the ones that I was intrigued by whereas other stories just didn't do anything for me.
I also not having read anything by Garner wasn't sure what to expect but overall, this was a solid read.
I liked the range of folk tales from around the world, although a lot are from Great Britain, overall it was a good mix of different countries which is nice to read but I only ended up enjoying a handful of tales.
A lot of the stories are fairly short which works if reading 1-2 a night and by a younger audience because as I read a few stories a day, to pace them out, I felt that their shortness left me wanting for more details to fall deeper into the tale for the ones that I was intrigued by whereas other stories just didn't do anything for me.
I also not having read anything by Garner wasn't sure what to expect but overall, this was a solid read.
June 30, 2023
A great collection of folk tales retold by Alan Garner. These tales are told in something close to their original forms as they deserve to be (not softened for children or the squeamish).
The stories come from various countries and cultures and quite often the endings are not what we might expect having been used to sanitised tales on film, TV and books.
This is a great book to sit and read one or two tales at a time and then come back to others. The shortest might span a couple of pages while some of the longer tales may be 20 or 30 pages long.
A good read if you are into folk tales, fairy tales and mythology.
The stories come from various countries and cultures and quite often the endings are not what we might expect having been used to sanitised tales on film, TV and books.
This is a great book to sit and read one or two tales at a time and then come back to others. The shortest might span a couple of pages while some of the longer tales may be 20 or 30 pages long.
A good read if you are into folk tales, fairy tales and mythology.
September 9, 2023
Wonderful, and wonder-full!
Some tales are a page long, others a dozen to a score, but all perfectly crafted by the master storyteller.
While mainly selected from Britain, Garner roves the world, from Russia to Turtle Island, from Japan to Africa, and points in-between.
The longest is a vivid retelling of the Ramayana, one of the shorter and weirder is that of Great Head. Odin and Loki appear, and there are phantom dogs, giants, goblins, quests and voyages, youngest sons, princesses, talking animals, witches, wizards, priests, warriors and The Old Ways.
Phantasmagorically kaleidoscopic! 5 Golden ⭐
Some tales are a page long, others a dozen to a score, but all perfectly crafted by the master storyteller.
While mainly selected from Britain, Garner roves the world, from Russia to Turtle Island, from Japan to Africa, and points in-between.
The longest is a vivid retelling of the Ramayana, one of the shorter and weirder is that of Great Head. Odin and Loki appear, and there are phantom dogs, giants, goblins, quests and voyages, youngest sons, princesses, talking animals, witches, wizards, priests, warriors and The Old Ways.
Phantasmagorically kaleidoscopic! 5 Golden ⭐
March 25, 2015
I loved this. You should read Neil Gaiman's review. He lauds this book way better than I ever could. It's quoted below:
"There was a hill that ate people," begins the first story. Just like that. "Far away, and a long time ago, on a high mountain, without trees for shelter, without body or arms for anything, on spindly legs, ran Great Head," begins another story. We are in the realm of folk tales, where we are told what happened, and we must simply go along with it.
There is something of the national treasure about Alan Garner. He has been writing excellent books for more than 50 years. He was, I suspect, the first person to write what now we would describe as urban fantasies. His prose at its best (and it is pretty much always at its best) seems inevitable, and pushes reviewers into using similes that compare it to rocks and gorges and unchanging natural formations.
As I read the Collected Folk Tales there was a feeling of happy familiarity from the first, a déjà vu, as if I knew these stories, some of them intimately. My assumption as I read was that I had encountered most of them in other forms and other places (folk tales are told and retold, after all), but then, when I finished reading, I looked at the copyright page, and realised that more than half the stories had been published in 1969 as The Hamish Hamilton Book of Goblins. I read it when I was nine, and reread it often. I could remember it in my local library, remembered taking it off to a quiet corner, remembered how much I had loved it.
It is peculiar to encounter a book half of which was assembled up to 40 years after the rest and not to be able to see any obvious difference in the writing or the writer. The prose in the old stories feels as inevitable as the new. The stories are written in a variety of voices, emulating the places the tales came from, but the prose is always spare and hard, not a word wasted, not a word out of place.
Here we have stories from Britain and Ireland and all over the world, retold with assurance. Some of the high points that were not in the original collection include "The Flying Children", a story of lies and sex and supernatural revenge and murder that I first encountered in Neil Philip's Penguin Book of English Folk Tales. It is a story that makes authors want to retell it (I shoehorned it into Sandman). Then there's a tale Garner calls "Iram Biram", which Philip called "The Pear Drum" when he collected it, and which is a curiosity in itself, because it began as a nightmarish Victorian short story by Lucy Clifford called "The New Mother". Garner strips it down to its elements. It's an act of literary ventriloquism that illuminates the oral and folk tradition. Two girls named Blue Eyes and Turkey are tempted by a wild girl to be naughty, with the promise of a gift of a mysterious "pear drum". They are not naughty enough to get the drum, but are still so naughty that their mother leaves, and a new mother, with glass eyes and a wooden tail, takes her place.
Garner goes beyond the original ending, playing with the sound and the meaning of words:
There were no lamps lit, but in the glow of the fire they saw through the window the glitter glitter green glass of a mother's eye. They heard the thump; thump; thump of a wooden tail.
Iram, biram, brendon bo
Where did all the children go?
They went to the east, they went to the west
They went where the cuckoo has its nest.
Iram. Biram. Brendon. Bo.
And the Wild Girl wept.
Garner makes up a poem, and adds the haunting image of the Wild Girl weeping as a way of closing the tale, thus moving it somewhere entirely new, away from Victorian nursery horror and into the realm of the twice-told tale.
The book itself has a core of goblin stories – but a goblin can be anything, and Garner's own preferences seems to be for moments of the inexplicable. So many of the tales lack explanation for the events in them, as if the stories were the lyrics of folk songs, and the true meaning is in the music. There is an essay in here on the roots of the fairy folk, and who they really were, or might have been. There are a few dialect pieces, written, Garner says, in the voice of his blacksmith grandfather. There are poems: some collected from "Anon" and the dead, others by Garner himself, my favourite being "R.I.P", which begins: "A girl in our village makes love in the churchyard. / She doesn't mind who, but it must be the churchyard," and continues, lusty and honest to its bitter-hopeful end.
There is a version of Valmiki's Ramayana. There are Norse gods, Algonquin revenge magic and a hero's odyssey from Ireland to a series of magical islands.
This Collected Folk Tales is, by definition and by temperament, a patchwork, and reading it is like entering a rag and bone shop in which every object has been polished up and repaired and made fit for use, while always leaving in the cracks and dents that show that the goods have had years of use already. With the exception of some of the poems, there is nothing new or shining here, and the book is all the better for it. If I had small children, or a class, I would read to them from it.
And if, by the time I have grandchildren, there are still public libraries, as I hope there will be, I trust that they will find this book themselves in one (for it will be all the better for not being given or suggested or recommended to them by an adult), and take it to a quiet corner and read.
"There was a hill that ate people," begins the first story. Just like that. "Far away, and a long time ago, on a high mountain, without trees for shelter, without body or arms for anything, on spindly legs, ran Great Head," begins another story. We are in the realm of folk tales, where we are told what happened, and we must simply go along with it.
There is something of the national treasure about Alan Garner. He has been writing excellent books for more than 50 years. He was, I suspect, the first person to write what now we would describe as urban fantasies. His prose at its best (and it is pretty much always at its best) seems inevitable, and pushes reviewers into using similes that compare it to rocks and gorges and unchanging natural formations.
As I read the Collected Folk Tales there was a feeling of happy familiarity from the first, a déjà vu, as if I knew these stories, some of them intimately. My assumption as I read was that I had encountered most of them in other forms and other places (folk tales are told and retold, after all), but then, when I finished reading, I looked at the copyright page, and realised that more than half the stories had been published in 1969 as The Hamish Hamilton Book of Goblins. I read it when I was nine, and reread it often. I could remember it in my local library, remembered taking it off to a quiet corner, remembered how much I had loved it.
It is peculiar to encounter a book half of which was assembled up to 40 years after the rest and not to be able to see any obvious difference in the writing or the writer. The prose in the old stories feels as inevitable as the new. The stories are written in a variety of voices, emulating the places the tales came from, but the prose is always spare and hard, not a word wasted, not a word out of place.
Here we have stories from Britain and Ireland and all over the world, retold with assurance. Some of the high points that were not in the original collection include "The Flying Children", a story of lies and sex and supernatural revenge and murder that I first encountered in Neil Philip's Penguin Book of English Folk Tales. It is a story that makes authors want to retell it (I shoehorned it into Sandman). Then there's a tale Garner calls "Iram Biram", which Philip called "The Pear Drum" when he collected it, and which is a curiosity in itself, because it began as a nightmarish Victorian short story by Lucy Clifford called "The New Mother". Garner strips it down to its elements. It's an act of literary ventriloquism that illuminates the oral and folk tradition. Two girls named Blue Eyes and Turkey are tempted by a wild girl to be naughty, with the promise of a gift of a mysterious "pear drum". They are not naughty enough to get the drum, but are still so naughty that their mother leaves, and a new mother, with glass eyes and a wooden tail, takes her place.
Garner goes beyond the original ending, playing with the sound and the meaning of words:
There were no lamps lit, but in the glow of the fire they saw through the window the glitter glitter green glass of a mother's eye. They heard the thump; thump; thump of a wooden tail.
Iram, biram, brendon bo
Where did all the children go?
They went to the east, they went to the west
They went where the cuckoo has its nest.
Iram. Biram. Brendon. Bo.
And the Wild Girl wept.
Garner makes up a poem, and adds the haunting image of the Wild Girl weeping as a way of closing the tale, thus moving it somewhere entirely new, away from Victorian nursery horror and into the realm of the twice-told tale.
The book itself has a core of goblin stories – but a goblin can be anything, and Garner's own preferences seems to be for moments of the inexplicable. So many of the tales lack explanation for the events in them, as if the stories were the lyrics of folk songs, and the true meaning is in the music. There is an essay in here on the roots of the fairy folk, and who they really were, or might have been. There are a few dialect pieces, written, Garner says, in the voice of his blacksmith grandfather. There are poems: some collected from "Anon" and the dead, others by Garner himself, my favourite being "R.I.P", which begins: "A girl in our village makes love in the churchyard. / She doesn't mind who, but it must be the churchyard," and continues, lusty and honest to its bitter-hopeful end.
There is a version of Valmiki's Ramayana. There are Norse gods, Algonquin revenge magic and a hero's odyssey from Ireland to a series of magical islands.
This Collected Folk Tales is, by definition and by temperament, a patchwork, and reading it is like entering a rag and bone shop in which every object has been polished up and repaired and made fit for use, while always leaving in the cracks and dents that show that the goods have had years of use already. With the exception of some of the poems, there is nothing new or shining here, and the book is all the better for it. If I had small children, or a class, I would read to them from it.
And if, by the time I have grandchildren, there are still public libraries, as I hope there will be, I trust that they will find this book themselves in one (for it will be all the better for not being given or suggested or recommended to them by an adult), and take it to a quiet corner and read.
April 13, 2018
An atmospheric, if jumbled, collection of tales. I was expecting far more British and Celtic stories, and those that there were I enjoyed. I particularly felt that the retelling of the Ramayana was out of place, but Garner's writing style is perfectly attuned to the oral style of the black dog and boggart tales in this collection, and it's worth reading for that along. Plus, that cover!!!
May 6, 2020
No matter how hard one may try, it is extremely difficult to express that particular feeling in dreams when the fantastical is immediately accepted as ordinary. Alan Garner’s prose is woven with that indescribable feeling. Without a wasted word, he manages to convince readers instantly that there is nothing random about blood tinted, or the fact that April can be tasted. Each story, passed on by generations, teaches the human mind's incredible capability of making the incredible acceptable and understanding.
April 29, 2023
the poetry was probably my favourite part of this, this one in particular:
Go to the green mound.
Enter the warm cave.
Drink of the wine there.
In fairyland is no remembrance.
The dead man screams
In the new child.
Give him the breast
Of forgetfulness.
Go to the green mound.
Enter the warm cave.
Drink of the wine there.
In fairyland is no remembrance.
The dead man screams
In the new child.
Give him the breast
Of forgetfulness.
July 26, 2024
Ludicrously marketed and shelved as a ‘children’s book’, this is a diverse set of stories collected by Garner and previously published in two other books. Although I am a huge Garner fan, this collection is so diverse in origin and style of telling, it really doesn’t hang together very well.
August 23, 2017
One of the best collections and retellings of folk tales out there, with some nice additions of Garner's own tales and poetry.
April 24, 2018
patchy. Some stories are brilliant. Others less so.
November 29, 2018
It wasn't exactly what I thought it would be, but that's on me, not on the book. It's interesting, but, as it's said on the introduction, it's meant to be hear more than read.
May 16, 2020
Perhaps I missed something with this collection but despite enjoying previous work by Alan Garner, this really wasn't for me I'm afraid.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 52 reviews