The Guizer

by Alan Garner

A collection of stories about fools drawn from American Indian, African, Irish, Gypsy, Sumatran, Flemish, and British sources.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Fantasy

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

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

[Leonca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Out of all the mythology or folklore books I’ve read, I’d rate this as one of the less enjoyable due to old language and references that often left me scratching my head. I was surprised there were no Coyote stories, but there was a rather amusing one about Anansi and elephant butts. My favorite story was Sir Halewyn, which is one of the creepiest folk tales I have ever come across. The title character, a serial killer with supernatural powers, reminds me in some ways of the villains in our most popular horror movies.

[Neil · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not a book actually written by Garner but only edited by him. A collection of folk-tales from around the world centring more or less around the subject of fools. Many are baffling and seemingly meaningless some are enjoyable. All in all a rather disappointing book.

[PJ Ebbrell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Collection of stories about a fool or many fools.

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ldlsp

[Bernard Macdonagh]

some good stuff...I bought it for the cover pic!