What I'm reading...

[readerjane]

...early Friday edition.

This week the menfolk and I finished Boneland, by Alan Garner.

It was a strange and unsatisfying story. Published in 2012, and so very different from the first two books from 1960 and 1963. Those two were children's fantasy: Boneyard is a grownup book where the main character is mentally ill. Whether the things he hears and sees are continuations of the magic events he experienced as a child, or hallucinations, is unclear. He does suffer from depression and anxiety, is obsessive, and very isolated.

I've only read small excerpts of Ulysses and The Sound and the Fury, but the disorienting nature of Boneland made me think of those. Not only was the narrative confusing, but sometimes I couldn't tell who was speaking from one line of dialog to another. Son believes that some of the lines I attributed to Colin were actually spoken by an invisible character.

Anyway, it's done now. We're going to finish out the Temeraire series next, and then figure out what to read aloud after that.

Comments

[rahirah]

Is this a sequel to The Weirdstone of Brisingamen/Moon of Gomrath? I read those ages ago as a young teen, and liked them well enough at the time, but most of the other Garner books I read (The Owl Service, for example) would, I think, fall into the "strange and unsatisfying" bucket for me.

[readerjane]

Yes, it is a sequel to the Weirdstone books. Usually I like late entries to a series, and enjoy seeing how the authors more mature outlook affects how they approach the original characters. I loved Ursula LeGuin's Tehanu and The Other Wind, written twenty years after the other Earthsea books. But not only was Boneland different in outlook; it was actually difficult to follow.

[rahirah]

If Wikipedia is to be believed, it sounds like Garner came to dislike the Weirdstone books and the characters in them, and resisted writing the third book for decades. Which might explain things a bit. :P