The Aimer Gate

The Stone Book Quartet #3

by Alan Garner, Michael Foreman (Illustrator)

Very good condition first edition hardcover in unclipped dust jacket, with etchings by Michael Foreman. Jacket is lightly marked and sunned. Otherwise, as unread. LW

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction

79 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Alan 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.

Reviews

[Richard Swan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This mini-novella is part of The Stone Book quartet, and describes a boy’s single day in WW1 when his uncle is home on leave. Descriptive, resonant, typically Garner; needs reading slowly, and twice. Children’s literature? Adult literature? Who knows (or cares)?

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Third installment in Garner's Stone Quartet series. This followed Richard who careened around the village in Wicked Winnie, a handmade wagon with speed, which doubled up as a form of transportation for a local war veteran amputee. Garner's protagonists always have integrity. I think this was my least favourite of the series so far, war themes do little for me, as do detailed information regarding the inner workings and mechanisms of church clocks.

I like the way Garner effortlessly manages to conjur up how it feels to be a child surrounded by adults, and how all the children in the series relate and react to the changing times. Richard has a secret place right at the top of the church spire, where pigeons dwell. He discovers a stonemason's signature marking right at the top of the inside of the spire, linking the story to the earlier characters in The Stone Book and Granny Reardun in a way that creates continuity without feeling remotely gimmicky.

The story feels authentic, almost as if it is a memoir. Garner has the ability to situate characters in time and place with great success. My Dad bought this set of books in the 80's and still has yet to read them, maybe now I've knocked the dust off them he might pick them up again. Whilst this series was written for children (each volume can be read in about half an hour) they don't feel juvenile at all, and the central themes are those that are integral to all of us: youth, family, community, history, environment. Thought provoking stories that feel metaphorical yet remain tauntingly sparse and elusive. Recommended.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here be scythes, whetstones, bantspinners, rakes, for swarf, bants, sheaves and kivvers. The harvest.

'The corn swarf lay like silk in the light of poppies.'

A jackacre of ruckled land, a feckazing for stone, raggled like a wagged tooth. Raunge the stones from round the field under the heat of the day, as the scythers stop for granching the baggin and a stone gallon bottle of beer.

Robert's father is tinsmith, locksmith and blacksmith. He made the hands of the chapel clock, his great-grandfather had mounted the weathercock on the church at the other end of the village, the church he'd built of local yellow-white dimension stone. His father now makes shoes for the horses for the War (Boer). All the pasture fields have been turned over by the plough.

Robert's secret place reveals a secret placed by his great-grandfather. It sets his future in motion, as his father oils the clock, and the scythers turn inwards in a square spiral, and his uncle cocks his gun. And the land grew black about.

[Worldsenough · Rating 5 out of 5]

Picked up this book as I recognized the author, Alan Garner, from the more famous ‘The Owl Service’ and others. Got home, sat down and inhaled this book like the smell of new-mown hay. It was as though someone had condensed a day of my childhood on to stained glass and held it up to the light. He has precisely recreated the hot summer days with a sense of foreboding, the reason for which is only known to the adults and the children know not to ask. Even the language was spot on, the same tortured expressions culled from the encounter of the English and French working classes. I was overcome by his precise reincarnation of a beautiful time with threads of tension and unspoken fear. I realized I had read the book through without unpacking the groceries, almost without breathing. I’m still suffused by it. What a story teller!

[Ivan Monckton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Firstly, it is hilarious that the blurb on Goodreads for this book, obviously lifted by AI direct from Amazon, is a seller’s description of an actual secondhand copy for sale….
I have bought and read every Alan Garner book as it was published, but there have been precious (but superb) few in recent years, so I am working my way them again as I come across them. This was one of a quartet of novellas for older children (and adults), but they are all self contained. This one deals with a day in the life of a young lad, his blacksmith father, soldier uncle and a disabled ex serviceman that the lad pulls around on his soapbox cart… it is simple, very real and powerful. It is also, in this first edition dust wrappered hardback, a thing of beauty in itself.

[Cooper Renner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of course I’ve read this before, and I still laugh when Uncle Charlie calls his nephew Robert “Dick-Richard” and neighbor Faddock (who lost his legs in the Boer War) “Starie Chelevek”. It’s astonishing that, almost 50 years ago, Garner’s English editors thought this one and its companions were children’s books. Highlights of 20th century literature for any age.

[Maureen McEvoy]

Set in WW1, for children. Dreamlike

[Tim Armstrong · Rating 5 out of 5]

If any is remotely interested in kids lit, this author and this quartet of books is required reading. Seriously special.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although The Aimer Gate is the third volume of the Stone Book quartet I ended up reading it fourth due to a misunderstanding on my part of its publishing history. Not that it makes a great deal of difference, as the themes that thread their way through the quartet are, I suspect, as strong whichever way you read it. The Aimer Gate (the title is never fully explained) is set in the years of the First World War. It is harvest time and although the rhythm of rural life has been barely disturbed by the war, the landscape and men's outlook is being changed forever. Garner brilliantly refers backwards and forwards to events in the other books of the series, and the whole thing holds together with remarkable effect. To me, The Stone Book is Alan Garner's greatest achievement. This is a re-reading (I first encountered it about fifteen years or so ago), and I expect I'll read it again at some point.

[Mir · Rating 3 out of 5]

What is the Aimer gate? I don't know. It didn't seem to be explained in the book, although there was an oblique reference that made me think it might have something to do with death. There seem to be various ideas about death, war, work, and time in the book, but I'm not certain what the author was saying about them. I read Garner when I was 8-10 and don't think whatever he was getting at would be very clear to kids that age. The story focused on Robert, a boy living in the country with his blacksmith father. His soldier uncle is visiting and helps with the harvest, and shoots some rabbits. His father maintains the clocks. Robert pulls a cart named Wicked Winnie which he used to transport a vet who is (I gather, it doesn't say) lame or had his legs blown off. It seemed like it was all meant to be symbolic of something.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very sobering and thought provoking at the end. Although the whole thing has a fairly sober tone.

As seen later in Boneland there is a fondness for stone and stones that threads through the book. And an interest in small, secret or enclosed spaces that possess a living personality. There's also an interest in life and death, and a style that takes this popular writing tip "show, don't tell" to a new level: Garner loves to describe his protagonist's actions in intricate, relentless but ambiguous detail. This, along with his adept use of vernacular tongues, gives me the sensation of trying to decipher writing in another language of which I have only a smattering. But the writing is so skilful and loaded with charisma that it carries me along with it regardless.

[KP · Rating 4 out of 5]

lots more to it than seen on first reading.