A review by hayesstw
Elidor by Alan Garner
5.0
I've just finished reading [b:Elidor|292654|Elidor|Alan Garner|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1328875908s/292654.jpg|2987303] for the seventh time (or is it the eighth?), and was quite surprised to see that it was nearly 25 years since the last time I read it.
What prompted this reading was that someone wrote a rather nice review of my children's book [b:Of wheels and witches|23715217|Of Wheels and Witches|Stephen Hayes|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1418051156s/23715217.jpg|43325109], and I began to wonder if it was worth trying to write a sequel, and I began to re-read Elidor to get me in to mood to think about it.
That's because [b:Elidor|292654|Elidor|Alan Garner|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1328875908s/292654.jpg|2987303] is, in my view at least, a kind of paradigm case of what a children's fantasy novel should be.
It's a bit like a combination of [a:C.S. Lewis|1069006|C.S. Lewis|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1367519078p2/1069006.jpg] and [a:Charles Williams|36289|Charles Williams|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1217390107p2/36289.jpg]. Though Lewis wrote stories for children, Charles Williams never did, but I imagine that if he had he would have written something like Elidor. The first 50 pages are like Lewis -- some children are snatched away into another world, the devastated dying world of Elidor. But the rest of the book is like Williams -- the other world irrupts into this world.
The protagonist of [b:Elidor|292654|Elidor|Alan Garner|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1328875908s/292654.jpg|2987303] is Roland Watson, the youngest of four middle-class siblings who live in Greater Manchester. In various parts of the story [a:Alan Garner|47991|Alan Garner|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1363273417p2/47991.jpg] satirises bourgeois tastes and values and contrasts their tameness with the wildness of Elidor, which only Roland really appreciates until, in the end, the wildness of Elidor overwhelms them all.
What prompted this reading was that someone wrote a rather nice review of my children's book [b:Of wheels and witches|23715217|Of Wheels and Witches|Stephen Hayes|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1418051156s/23715217.jpg|43325109], and I began to wonder if it was worth trying to write a sequel, and I began to re-read Elidor to get me in to mood to think about it.
That's because [b:Elidor|292654|Elidor|Alan Garner|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1328875908s/292654.jpg|2987303] is, in my view at least, a kind of paradigm case of what a children's fantasy novel should be.
It's a bit like a combination of [a:C.S. Lewis|1069006|C.S. Lewis|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1367519078p2/1069006.jpg] and [a:Charles Williams|36289|Charles Williams|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1217390107p2/36289.jpg]. Though Lewis wrote stories for children, Charles Williams never did, but I imagine that if he had he would have written something like Elidor. The first 50 pages are like Lewis -- some children are snatched away into another world, the devastated dying world of Elidor. But the rest of the book is like Williams -- the other world irrupts into this world.
The protagonist of [b:Elidor|292654|Elidor|Alan Garner|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1328875908s/292654.jpg|2987303] is Roland Watson, the youngest of four middle-class siblings who live in Greater Manchester. In various parts of the story [a:Alan Garner|47991|Alan Garner|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1363273417p2/47991.jpg] satirises bourgeois tastes and values and contrasts their tameness with the wildness of Elidor, which only Roland really appreciates until, in the end, the wildness of Elidor overwhelms them all.