Henry Brocken: His Travels and Adventures in the Rich Strange Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance

by Walter de la Mare

This is a pre-1923 historical reproduction that was curated for quality. Quality assurance was conducted on each of these books in an attempt to remove books with imperfections introduced by the digitization process. Though we have made best efforts - the books may have occasional errors that do not impede the reading experience. We believe this work is culturally important and have elected to bring the book back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. This text refers to the Bibliobazaar edition.

116 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2000

About the author

Walter John de la Mare was an English poet, short story writer and novelist. He is probably best remembered for his works for children, for his poem "The Listeners", and for his psychological horror short fiction, including "Seaton's Aunt" and "All Hallows". In 1921, his novel Memoirs of a Midget won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, and his post-war Collected Stories for Children won the 1947 Carnegie Medal for British children's books.

Reviews

[Scott Raphael · Rating 1 out of 5]

Henry Brocken, to me, feels like an exercise in showing off how many literary references de la Mare is familiar with, between the epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter and the general plot of the novella containing characters from other works. Unfortunately, it is not an exercise in creativity, originality, or particular writing prowess. The protagonist is undeveloped, a flat mannequin of a character who explores around pointlessly with no personal goals, agendas, or participation in what he sees beyond asking inane questions. The characters, all figures from better-written and generally-actually-developed literature, simply talk about what they are or what their purposes are. And then he moves onto the next one. A land where literary figures all exist in reality is an interesting one, but there’s no attempt at original execution. No plot connects the episodes, no messages or deep meanings can be extracted by the weakly pasted together segments, and the writing is simple, bland, and does nothing to inspire the reader with a sense of artistic beauty.
There is no point to this book aside from de la Mare’s own pride, and unless you really like the feeling of arrogantly understanding every literary reference haphazardly tossed into a book, there is no point in reading this one. His first published novel, and clearly there’s a lot of room for growth on all fronts.

[Martyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

My thought, while I was reading it, was that here was a writer who could have written The Lord of the Rings – not in terms of the plot, certainly, but in terms of the beauty and style of the writing and language. As a piece of fiction it leaves something to be desired, having no real plot to it in which to become engaged, but as a piece – or as an assemblage – of beautiful writings, it is a rather gorgeous and atmospheric piece of work, at least for the most part, starting well and ending well with perhaps a little lull in the middle – though that perceived lull could have been due to my own mood and distracted frame of mind. It's possibly the kind of book which you could read one day, when your heart isn't really in it, and give it only two stars, and read it again another day when the conditions are right and give it five stars.

If I ever read it again it is possible that I shall attempt to read it aloud to myself, just as I would with poetry. The pleasure of reading it may be heightened by orally articulating the words and aurally hearing them. It could be a good book for people wanting to practise the art of public speaking, or at least of public reading. Definitely a book I'd like to read again - when I am in the right frame of mind to really enjoy it.

[Brian Doak Carlin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pleasantly awful, with the only redeeming factor being if I ever decide to write a novel it won’t be the worst. A half-baked plot with zero character description or development. A young man’s novel where he’s got carried away with an idea but apparently put little work into developing it. Much better stuff due in the future for young Walter.

[Prisoner 071053 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jasper Fforde did it way better.

[Sem · Rating 4 out of 5]

It needed hobbits.