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Weird books
Alan Garner's Moon of Gomrath: sequel to The weirdstone of Brisingamen which I read over Christmas I borrowed this and brought it back to Cambridge with me. Children's fantasy novels at their best these, drawing strongly from British myth but keeping a modern touch. A touch which doesn't seem all that dated even though they're now over 20 years old. This one suffered a little from me being so tired I had to put it down through not being able to keep my eyes open partway through, and I lost the thread of the plot a little when I picked it up again. Still, good stuff.
Much creepier is Charles Burns' Black Hole which I just borrowed from Richard. A very dark little tale it's dated back in the early 70s in small-town America, and centred around the kids from one high school. Nice kids some of them. And some not so nice. And a rather nasty bug that's apparently sexually transmitted, which does more than make you a bit uncomfortable for a week. Imagine if each time you have your period your entire skin moults. Or what it would be like to have a tail like a lizard's that grows back each time it breaks off. And these are the lucky ones, the ones who seem almost normal. It's done strange things to my mood really, but it's very very good.
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And the rest! I remember reading both The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon Of Gomrath back when I was about seven; to say nothing of there being a very fine TV adaptation of The Owl Service soon after. Beautiful, atmospheric writing made all the better by being set in a part of the world I know well; it's good to know he's still about (http://members.ozemail.com.au/~xenophon/).
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Black Hole has a curious property, that it's not an AIDS metaphor. It's set at roughly the right time; it's got some of the right ideas (sexual transmission, ostracism of victims, striking down of the young and beautiful) but there's a couple of ways in which it pointedly avoids talking about AIDS (the actors are just a bit too young, and much too straight).
In a literary sense arguably that mean it gains points for avoiding cliché. In a social sense you could say it's a cop-out, if you were looking for an AIDS metaphor, but I think it is adequately redeemed by what it does want to talk about; it is coming from the same place as Heathers, for instance, or perhaps even The Breakfast Club.
I want to watch more 80s John Hughes now...
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WSoB was fun, but left me with a nagging feeling that (a) the sleeping knights were too macguffiny and (b) they trusted the guy they met first a bit too easily. I would like to know what happened next though, I never knew there was a sequel.
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