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The Stone Book Quartet #1
Stone Book
The Stone Book
64 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
2 people are currently reading
237 people want to read
About the author
Alan Garner
80 books750 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.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
July 29, 2016
The Stone Book quartet made a massive impression on me when I first read it some fifteen years ago, and I've always meant to re-read it. This first book in the series sets the standard for the others: in just sixty pages of tight, beautifully crafted prose, Alan Garner tells a story of such profundity and delicacy that is nothing short of a masterpiece. I've been lucky to read the original hardback book, first published in 1976 with the wonderful complementary impressionistic illustrations by Michael Foreman.
September 5, 2022
Took me a while to get what the author was trying to do. It’s an interesting concept. Sadly, it hasn’t aged well and has a very old fashioned feel.
March 17, 2016
A 1001 CBYMRBYGU.
Not really sure I understood this book, but I’ll give it my best shot. A young girl asks her father for a book. He leads her to a passage in a mountain so small that only children can venture in. Inside she finds a drawing of a bull, a stone mason’s mark, a handprint, and many footprints. The experience seems to have satisfied some need in both the child and, earlier in his life, in her father.
Not really sure I understood this book, but I’ll give it my best shot. A young girl asks her father for a book. He leads her to a passage in a mountain so small that only children can venture in. Inside she finds a drawing of a bull, a stone mason’s mark, a handprint, and many footprints. The experience seems to have satisfied some need in both the child and, earlier in his life, in her father.
January 6, 2013
Excellent.
November 12, 2018
*spoilers* I think it may be important to read the entire quartet to get the full impact of these stories. As a stand-alone, The Stone Book is a bit odd. The language is a strong unidentifiable dialect perhaps during the 1800s. The race of the characters is unclear, although the girl's desire for a book or to learn how to read might suggest they are recently freed slaves, or poor settlers in a small, but growing town. The father is a stone mason and in response to his daughter's request (she wants a prayer book in which to press flowers as the other girls, who also cannot read, do), he takes her into an old mine. He tells her to follow the malachite, and other types of rock. She knows these after a lifetime of observing her father's love of rocks. In the mine, she finds old cave paintings from long-lost civilizations. The rite of passage (her father saw them too when he was her age - stonemasons in their family only go once to see them) connects her to the earth and to things greater than herself. She leaves the mine a changed person. Still, her father gives her a prayer book, one carved from stone that contains all of the stories in the world. As an aside, her uncle lives in the home with the family. He is a deaf weaver, obviously symbolic of time and the history of mankind. The Stone Book is a very short read, but one that will stick with you for a long time.
April 21, 2025
Alan Garner came on my radar because his first novel The Weirdstone of Brisingamen was referenced by several authors I admire. I am also a big fan of children's fantasy, it's the realm I'm most comfortable writing in currently.
The Stone Book is subtly weird and strange, telling a simple story about a girl who has a stonemason for a father. He is helping build a school, homes, roads (he carved a path through solid rock) and his daughter is to bring him his baggin (bread, onion, sweet cold tea) while he is working on finishing the steeple of the church. She climbs up to him, and what follows is a father/daughter story that is about what we pass on to our children, and how to appreciate your place in life and dig deep into that. It's a very English book, and it impressed me how Garner shows the father would rather his daughter learn to read stone than to read a book. She wants to become a maid and work in the fancy house of the man who is funding all this building. Her father wants her to follow in his footsteps, learn the stone.
I won't give away the ending, what I wish I could talk to someone about it.
This is a wonderful, strange little book, found in a free library. It makes me excited to read more of Garner's work.
The Stone Book is subtly weird and strange, telling a simple story about a girl who has a stonemason for a father. He is helping build a school, homes, roads (he carved a path through solid rock) and his daughter is to bring him his baggin (bread, onion, sweet cold tea) while he is working on finishing the steeple of the church. She climbs up to him, and what follows is a father/daughter story that is about what we pass on to our children, and how to appreciate your place in life and dig deep into that. It's a very English book, and it impressed me how Garner shows the father would rather his daughter learn to read stone than to read a book. She wants to become a maid and work in the fancy house of the man who is funding all this building. Her father wants her to follow in his footsteps, learn the stone.
I won't give away the ending, what I wish I could talk to someone about it.
This is a wonderful, strange little book, found in a free library. It makes me excited to read more of Garner's work.
June 17, 2018
Story, language, land and character. A deep sense of place. A plunging in time. A story of stone.
Here are words obscure: gangue (material such as quartz around a mineral); ophicleide (a long straight brass instrument like a tuba but shaped like a sudraphone); a Macclesfield dandy (a cheap clay pipe). galena (otherwise known as 'lead glance', the natural mineral form of lead sulfide, a source of silver, which has a beautiful black-silver sheen); stope (an excavation from steps made by the mining of ore from steeply inclined veins); puddingstone (or plum-pudding stone, a conglomerate of rounded pebbles), and marl (lime-rich mudstone of clay and silt), and foxbench (?). The green stain of malachite, Tough Tom (?).
'A book has only one story...'
Ah, but it spawns a dozen others.
Here are words obscure: gangue (material such as quartz around a mineral); ophicleide (a long straight brass instrument like a tuba but shaped like a sudraphone); a Macclesfield dandy (a cheap clay pipe). galena (otherwise known as 'lead glance', the natural mineral form of lead sulfide, a source of silver, which has a beautiful black-silver sheen); stope (an excavation from steps made by the mining of ore from steeply inclined veins); puddingstone (or plum-pudding stone, a conglomerate of rounded pebbles), and marl (lime-rich mudstone of clay and silt), and foxbench (?). The green stain of malachite, Tough Tom (?).
'A book has only one story...'
Ah, but it spawns a dozen others.
June 21, 2022
I will hold off on reviewing properly until I’ve read the other three books, but I picked these up after a friend posted the cover of this one: like its contents, the imagery is deep, mystical, a little unsettling. I love Garner as an adult and wish I’d grown up with his work.
August 10, 2017
I don't think I get it--whoops.
September 5, 2019
A story of the past but not the future. Go deep into the land and call up your ancestors. Keep them alive until the bulldozers come.
November 12, 2024
Almost 50 years old now—the first part of the quartet. Artistry as few writers have made.
October 14, 2021
The first in this classic quartet of books, from one of Britain’s finest kids writers! Required reading, and quite rightly considered some of the author’s best work.
March 28, 2015
Amazing - such a fine miniature portrait of a working class Victorian family - father a stone mason, grandfather a weaver - and an extraordinary life-changing event in a young girl's life - wow!
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews