The 50th birthday of Alan Garner's The Weirdstone of Brisingamen is a great excuse for a festival – and some serious reading.
The view from Alderley Edge, the setting for Alan Garner's The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. Photograph: Phil Noble/PA
We went to an autumnal wedding near Alderley Edge when I was 10, and I remember so clearly the walk we went on the next day: cold and gloomy and grey though it was, I scurried off by myself to lean against a rock and try, desperately to imagine myself into the world of Alan Garner's The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. I wanted the svart-alfar to attack me, Cadellin to rescue me, and the still, anticipatory atmosphere of those dimly lit woods almost convinced me they might.
Unsurprisingly, nothing happened, and we returned home. But I'm reminded of my childhood adoration of Garner by the startling news that it is 50 years – 50 years! – since he published The Weirdstone, his first novel, and the occasion is being marked with events throughout this year. There's an interview with Garner and a lecture at the Oxford literary festival in March, an exhibition of the author's works in Chester this autumn, and most joyfully, a weekend festival in October in Alderley Edge where, among guided walks and lectures and readings and commemorative badges, there will even be a medieval fair.
Count me in: The Weirdstone of Brisingamen is a book that deserves to be celebrated, along with the rest of Garner's dark, unforgettable children's books: The Weirdstone's sequel The Moon of Gomrath, The Owl Service and Elidor. Drawing on the legend of Alderley, the novel follows the adventures of Colin and Susan. Susan is the unwitting possessor of the Weirdstone, a magical jewel that binds 140 knights into an enchanted sleep in Fundindelve, a cave on Alderley Edge.
When Colin and Susan are chased by dark elves, the svart-alfar, they are rescued by Cadellin Silverbrow, the wizard who has been searching for the lost jewel for more than 100 years. Evil forces (including the Morrigan, disguised as a "powerfully built" woman whose "head rested firmly on her shoulders without appearing to have much of a neck at all") are abroad and also looking for the jewel, and the children undergo a series of terrifying adventures, including one narrow escape that has been burned into my mind and has also, I think, contributed to a slight tendency to claustrophobia.
Escaping from the svarts, Colin and Susan and their dwarf friends are forced to climb through a deep, narrow tunnel. "They lay full length, walls, floor and roof fitting them like a second skin. Their heads were turned to one side, for in any other position the roof pressed their mouths into the sand and they could not breathe. The only way to advance was to pull with the fingertips and to push with the toes, since it was impossible to flex their legs at all, and any bending of the elbows threatened to jam the arms helplessly under the body," writes Garner, in my trusty ancient copy which serendipitously happens to be here in London rather than at my parents'. "Colin found that he had to rest more and more frequently. He thought of the hundreds of feet of rock above and of the miles of rock below, and himself wedged into a nine-inch gap between."
They encounter a hairpin bend, where Colin gets jammed, and then, most horrifically, to water – unable to see how long it lasts, and with retreat impossible, they each decide that it's "better a quick road to forgetfulness than a lingering one" and push on through. It's sending shivers down my spine even now.
I also adored The Moon of Gomrath, particularly Susan's compulsive building of a fire that calls the Wild Hunt, but my favourite Garner novel must be The Owl Service and its plaintive, petrifying, "she wants to be flowers and you make her owls". It's a long wait until October: I think I'm going to have to read them all again in anticipation.
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Posted by: Oconnor33Christine | Wednesday, March 10, 2010 at 11:01