August 31, 2008
Strandloper
When Alan Garner’s Strandloper (Harvill) appeared in 1996, it was immediately notable for a couple of uncommon reasons: for one thing it was the first “official” novel for adults by a man widely noted in the UK for his books for younger readers; secondly, it was in every sense a further growth from two of those earlier novels (The Owl Service, 1967, and Red Shift, 1973). It was almost as if Garner was still writing for the audience which first read those earlier titles, but recognizing that they were then teenagers but were now 35 or 40 years old. Strandloper was also his first novel in 23 years. (The Stone Book Quartet, a sequence of novellas originally published separately in the late ’70s, is both ostensibly for children and sui generis, not to mention a work of absolute genius.) While the plotline of Strandloper is one that another first-rate novelist might have used–a young Englishman is “transported” to Australia for angering the local lord and there escapes captivity and becomes an important member of a native tribe–what makes Garner’s book unique, or nearly so, is the telling: Garner’s language, the parts of the telling left untold, the space he leaves for the reader’s own mind. No matter what your favorite kind of reading is, I recommend Strandloper to you. Unlike almost every book published in the past 50 years, it is one whose reputation will almost certainly grow over the next 50 years, by which time it might have finally attained its deserved place in our literary landscape.
(PS: Yes, I know I’ve written about this before. Hehehe.)
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Strandloper rocks.
hear hear.