The cover of my teenage copy of Elidor
I have always been disappointed by Alan Garner's Elidor (1965); coming as it does between two of my very favourite children's fantasy books The Moon of Gomrath (1963) and The Owl Service (1967). Indeed, I simply did not enjoy Elidor when first I read it (aged 14 0r 15), or at subsequent attempts.
Yet, Elidor has been the most well-known of Garner's four children's fantasies; being often taught in schools, and leading to a BBC TV series. So I thought I would give the book another try - this time in the audio version read by Jonathan Keeble.
I can see why I was not much taken by the book, since it is structured more like a thriller than a fantasy. The fantasy elements are swamped by the detailed, realistic descriptions of physical and social life in Manchester and its suburbs - which are often grimy; replete with arguments, angst and stresses; and containing implied 'social commentary' (which are very likely the exact reasons why British school teachers appreciated this book above Garner's true fantasies).
Furthermore the book starts slowly and with a miserable tone. Following a deal of childish bickering, the fantasy land of Elidor is briefly glimpsed and seems almost-wholly unpleasant and hazardous. Malbron - the only Elidorian man the children talk-with - is a callous and unsympathetic character, and we know hardly anything about him - or indeed Elidor.
The early chapters set up the main interest of the book which is that four siblings have been given (against their will) the task of guarding four treasures of Elidor, needed to stop the land being destroyed.
However; I felt that I did not know enough about Malebron to be confident that he was honest, or to care whether Elidor was a place worth saving at great risk to the children.
The siblings return to modern Manchester with the treasures disguised as modern objects - and the best part of the book is the exciting middle section during which the children gradually realize that the treasures are hazardous (giving-off a strong and disruptive electromagnetic field).
The treasures are also attracting sinister warriors from Elidor - who are repeatedly trying to break-through to the modern world, and getting closer and closer...
After the slow pace and detailed descriptions of the main book; the ending is abrupt, feels incomplete, and is emotionally unsatisfying.
Furthermore - it is so complete a plot re-set, as to leave the children in their modern world without any record or residue of their experiences: apparently the modern world is completely unchanged by its period communication with Elidor.
So, the retrospective reframing of the Elidor narrative - looking back from its ending - is that its only purpose was to save a land we barely know; and that the process has been futile from a modern perspective.
Everything that happened 'might as well' have been a dream or a delusion (as some of the siblings tend to believe, about halfway through the story)...
And this was, unfortunately, Garner's own retrospective reframing (in Boneland some half century later) of his first two novels (Weirdstone of Brinsigamen and Moon of Gomrath) - as nothing more than dream-delusions of one of the child protagonists. As I remarked in my review - this is anti-fantasy, being subversive of fantasy - as evidenced by its rejection of eucatastrophe.
The actual ending of Elidor comes across as cynical, pretentious, and indeed aggressive.
This is very interesting to me in contrast with Garner's previous Moon of Gomrath; which ends with the liberation of the Old Magic into the modern world, and the implication that things will never be the same again - that, indeed, the modern world is just about to be transformed (for the better, it is implied) by a resurgence of enchantment and a renewed contact between Man, nature and the spiritual powers.
My best guess would be that Garner underwent some kind of profound disillusionment between the writing of Gomrath and Elidor - which left him increasingly bitter and resentful (which is how he generally strikes me, as a person).
But this is speculation; what is clear from the texts is that Garner lost his youthful optimism and decided to explore and evoke downbeat pessimism and despair in his later fiction, lectures and essays.
My evaluation of Elidor is that overall it fails structurally as a novel and as a fantasy; and fails to establish credible characters and motivations in relation to Elidor. On the plus side, it is genuinely tense and exciting through the middle section and until near the end - which section, after all, includes most of the book.
11 comments:
Well, we can't all like the same things and I understand your critique, but to me Elidor's an absolute lightning-flash of a book. It has been for a number of my friends over the decades as well. Is that because we're from Manchester? Maybe so. Garner did a wonderful thing for my sometimes drab home city here - baptising it, as it were, in the waters of the imagination.
I wrote a reflection on Elidor on Albion Awakening in 2017, you might remember. Here's my opening paragraph -
'Every word in Elidor is freighted with gold. Published in 1965, Alan Garner's third novel does for Manchester (and all cities by extension) what The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960) and Moon of Gomrath (1963) did for the valleys, woods and hills of Cheshire. He imbues the cityscape with a numinous depth charge. The stuff of everyday urban life - lamp posts, railway bridges, terraced houses - take on an almost sacramental glow, pointing to a level of understanding beyond the reach of materialist models of reality.'
Roland, for me, comes across as nothing less than a prophet. Not appreciated in his 'home country', of course -
'Roland is a lantern bearer. He unfurls the banner of the Imagination, in both Elidor and Manchester, at the points where disenchantment and desacralisation seem strongest. I also see in him a herald of the coming spiritual resurgence, the Age of the Holy Spirit prophecied by Joachim de Flore in the twelfth century and Nicholas Berdyaev in the twentieth. Roland stands in the High Places, watching and waiting for the signs of this imaginative renaissance. It is a fine and noble calling, and possibly all that can be achieved at this time.'
So there we are. I'll certainly check out The Minnipins and hopefully read it to the kids,
JF
@John - I know of your love of this book, and it was partly this that made me have another try at it; but it's clearly not for me!
On the other hand, my own special love of The Moon of Gomrath (specifically - distinct from Brisingamen and at a qualitatively higher level) seems to be almost unique to me among Garner fans.
I'm with you on Moon of Gomrath. There's something deeply powerful and quite extraordinary about it. It's infinitely more than a 'sequel' and despite everything I've just said about Eldor I think it's his best book. I never once thought we needed a third Colin and Susan book to round things off and I was surprised, then excited, then disappointed when Boneland came out. What a waste of space that book is!
@John - Great! So that's at least two of us - maybe we should from a Gomrath Society!
I also really would prefer if Boneland had not been written. Aside from its being shockingly ineptly-written in parts; the way AG implies that the first two novels had all been a dream or delusion is both puerile and an act of literary self-vandalism.
But I find it fascinating to speculate about how the world might have changed if the Old Magic really had been awoken at Alderley Edge in the middle 1960s; including how it might have affected Colin and Susan's life from that point. The theme is potentially so vast and rich as to be almost frightening.
I have a hunch that AG was expecting, as well as hoping, that exactly this might happen; and was devastatingly disappointed when it did not. I had similar expectations myself, in my middle teens (partly fuelled by Gomrath, and the White Goddess, which was a source); and it took a very long time to work through them and out the other side.
That's an interesting thought. I might reread MoG in the near future and keep that angle in mind as I do so.
@John - That's good - I hoped I might be planting a seed there!
I enjoyed Brisingamen, Moon, and Elidor - all only read as an adult - maybe more as John did, with Elidor different not least as 'urban' (I somehow think of Elidor and Madeleine L'Engle's The Young Unicorns (1968) together - maybe since 'urban'?).
I never caught up with Boneland and, I think, avoided 'spoilers', and so am sorry to read how it seems to have attempted to 'scupper' Brisingamen and Moon.
You both certainly leave me wanting to reread Brisingamen, Moon, and Elidor!
David Llewellyn Dodds
Alan Garner's Elidor was a transitional book between his two fantasy novels, which are indebted to Tolkien and a hundred other similar novels and his step towards a mature engagement with myth, folklore, location and time. If you read interviews with Garner and critical material about Elidor you will see that the ending is not mean to be, nor is, nihilistic. Boneland doesn't simply write off the first two books, it changes readers' perspectives on it. For me, however, nothing has come close to Red Shift although The Owl Service, The Stone Quartet, Strandloper and Thursbitch come close. It's strange to come across eulogising Weirdstone and Gomrath, which - however much they are and were enjoyed by children – are really only derivative juvenalia. I think you are way off the mark about despair and cynicism too!
Rupert Loydell
@RL - I would have to know something of your own ideology or religion - it may be that you yourself hold to nihilistic beliefs, materialism etc; and therefore naturally disagree with my evaluation.
Personally I've always loved Elidor, and maybe for some of the very reasons some people don't like it. The world the four children travel to is clearly based on Celtic mythology, with the castles named, Findias, Falias, Gorias and Murias, with the four treasures coming straight out of Irish mythology where they are cities of the Tuatha Dé Danann, whilst the mound of Vandwy gets its name from Welsh myth, where its the name of a castle ruled by Gwyn ap Nudd, Lord of the Celtic otherworld Annwfn.
There has obviously been something that has gone seriously wrong in the world the children travel to, but what exactly is never explained, and it's not even clear that the side of light wins in Elidor. The part the children play is obviously only part of a greater story which is never told, rather as if Fatty Bolger recounted his part in Lord of the Rings before the return of his friends Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin to tell how it all went. And it's that sense of another mysterious world, close by, where tremendous things are happening which we will never know about, but which could have terrible repercussions in our world, that I liked, and still do. That and the children acted the best they could, without expecting any reward, or even that they would ever see the effect of what they had done. And all set in a modern setting of slum clearence in modern day Manchester, (well, it was modern when he wrote it). All of which of course means it breaks all the rules of writing a good book, but still is loved by many readers. I highly respect such rule breakers, Tolkien being another (the literary establishment still haven't forgiven either him, or his friend C. S. Lewis).
I've often thought, unlike many fantasy books like for example the Narnia books, it would be fairly easy to set it in America if it was ever adapted. The settings of Manchester, in the deserted areas where everyone has left, and the buildings are crumbling or being demolished, could easily be set in modern day Detroit for example.
@Terry Stewart - Well, I certainly don't want to spoil anyone else's enjoyment of Elidor! - I was trying to explain my own dislike-of/ indifference-to the book across a span of 50 years.
What I find most difficult to explain about Garner's ouevre, is how utterly superb the Owl Service turned-out to be - coming *after* Elidor!
If the order of composition had instead gone Gomrath, Owl Service, Elidor, Red Shift - then to me this looks like a comprehensible progression of Garner's underlying beliefs and motivations - hence technique.
And, indeed, achievement. Since I regard Gomrath and Owl Service as Garner's best books - it would "make more sense" if they were adjacent, rather than separated.
I'm afraid I regard Garner - for all his literary skill - as a man ruined by descent into bitterness and resentment, of a political/ ideological nature.
https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/search?q=alan+garner
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