Garner had rediscovered his own vocabulary in the cadence of the poetic text. It was a lifeline that retained a sense of a national identity continually under threat over time. There are allusions to the survival of the poem’s dialect in Boneland, when Bert (Bertilak?) the taxi-driver informs Colin, in reference to the duration of his working shift, that he ‘is the governor of this gang’ (Garner 141). Similarly, in The Stone Book (1976), a novel steeped in the vocabulary of Garner’s Cheshire, the Father states that when left at work alone on the church steeple he is ‘the Governor of this gang’ (Garner, 2006 7). These are of course references to the Green Knight’s entrance into Arthur’s court when, after scanning the noble company seated high on the dais, he undermines their elevated position and status by asking: ‘Wher is […]/ The gouernour of this gyng?’ (ll. 224-5). The language of the poem is easily accessible and understandable for the Garner’s and idiomatic expressions survive through successive generations inhabiting the same Cheshire landscape over many centuries.

Precocious 12 yr old (there were many): Mr Garner, wouldn’t you say that you are very much influenced by J.R.R. Tolkien? Ursula K Le Guin has just reviewed the book for the Guardian, and like just about everything she writes, her review is compulsory reading. She points out why the book is difficult: "It treads on risky ground. Readers looking for more than mere adventure expect characters whose behaviour and reactions are humanly comprehensible. As a child confined to bed, finding a world in the ceiling above him, Garner “played with time as if it were chewing gum … I had to”. All his work is fascinated by the inner time of dream and vision, as well as deep geological time and the eternal present of myth, but Boneland explored scientific reasoning behind “the impossibility of now”. In Treacle Walker, discussions of subatomic particles give way to koans. The epigraph is taken from theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli: “Time is ignorance.” Rovelli believes that it’s a mistake to pursue our sense of time in physics alone – that it’s linked to human brain structure. Or as Garner has it here: “What’s out is in. What’s in is out.” Lost his twin sister in mysterious circumstances - she went horse-riding by night, and only the horse was found; it is assumed she was thrown in the waters of a lake and drowned;Again, nothing in Lowdon’s summary is actually wrong, per se, but neither does she seem to me to actually engage with the novel. Or, rather, I don’t think she particularly wants to engage with the novel. Ironically, however—or possibly unintentionally—she does hit on something significant when she describes the novel as “feeling curiously outdated,” but there is no chance for her to follow up on this. I’ll be doing that for her later. And yet I can’t, offhand, think of a review of any of Garner’s work, certainly not his more recent work, that risks anything more than faint puzzlement at the bits the critic doesn’t understand, although Penelope Lively did express some irritation over Garner’s use of language in Strandloper (1996) and was unpersuaded by the connections he sought to make between Cheshire and the cultures of indigenous Australians. Nowadays, I too have my reasons for doubt, although the words I am currently toying with are “cultural appropriation.” There is probably a case to be made at some point too for reading Garner’s work through Bakhtin’s theories, if someone hasn’t already, but that’s a job for another day. Colin has become a brilliant astrophysicist, ornithologist, and all-round savant with five or six masters' degrees, as well as being an outstanding cook, carpenter, and social misfit. He has total recall of everything that has happened to him since the age of 13, but has lost all memory of the years before that, along with his sister, and his intrepidity. The almost phlegmatically fearless child has become an anguished, supersensitive, self-absorbed man whose incoherent obsessions are driving him mad. The publisher also unveiled a short scene from the novel. "A woman was reading a book to a child on her knee. 'So the little boy went into the wood, and he met a witch. And the witch said, "You come home with me and I'll give you a good dinner." Now you wouldn't go home with a witch, would you?' Colin stood. 'Young man. Do not go into the witch's house. Do not. And whatever you do, do not go upstairs. You must not go upstairs. Do not go! You are not to go!'" And she, in the end, appears to have been a witch or goddess: in a serious novel, this is again risky.

Boneland, the long awaited third volume in Alan Garner’s Weirdstone trilogy, is a finely drawn and ambiguous tale, that every reader will draw different things from. This is perhaps the mark of a truly great novel, and one that will surely last in memory as long as its predecessors. Considering the long gap since the last volume, The Moon of Gomrath, a reread of the previous books will place the reader in a good position to get the most from this final volume. For all that, Boneland strikes its own ground and Mr Garner takes the tale in a bold new direction. No, it isn’t Weirdstone and it isn’t Gomrath, but Boneland seems the perfect epilogue to those earlier stories. The threads between all three books remain strong on a deeper level than your average cut-and-dried trilogy. Lobotomy: Colin is threatened with electro-convulsive therapy and "sectioning", ie this being done to him without his consent, is also mentioned. Indeed, the enigmatic eight opening lines of the novel describe somebody being anaesthetised prior to an operation. note Local anesthetic is injected into the scalp prior to application of electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) The Hecate Sisters: Garner's work retells old folk myths from the British Isles and draws on thousands of years of oral and mythological tradition. The mythology and folklore of the moon and lunar cycles features heavily, as does the symbolism of triads and triples. Observe the triad of roles played by Meg Massey as she shifts gears and approaches in dealing with Colin's mercurial states. She is almost-girlfriend(the maiden, the waxing moon); healing therapist (the nurturing Mother, the Full Moon) and closes her involvement with a kind of separation(the waning old moon, the Crone, herald of Death and change).I read The Weirdstone of Brisingamen when I was nine and was totally captured by it. It was and still is my favourite book. The Moon of Gomrath in some ways disappointed me because it did not have more of Cadellin and the dwarves that I had loved in the first book and it was a more demanding read that I did not fully understand as a child. Boneland I therefore eagerly waited for full of excitement and anticipation wondering what would happen next. It has left me perplexed and full of questions. I did enjoy it, the language and the mix of reality and myth and the insight into Colin's mental state was wonderfully explored but it has left me needing to discuss this book with someone else who has shared these books too. What does happen in this book? What has happened to Colin and to Susan? Who were Meg and Bert? What has Colin become at the end? What does it all mean? Innocence Lost: Colin Whisterfield in the multi-level, multi-ambiguous, ever-shifting Bonelands. Is he - in reality - a survivor of child sex abuse? Whose trauma was then compounded when his sister drowned accidentally? That his memories of dealing with an evil witch in a primal fight against evil, abducted to her by her dwarf servant, are really of sexual trauma. As Homage to one who fished in the same stream and also lived in the tradition of the English storyteller, giving old stories new slants, there is a blatant reference to Terry Pratchett's Discworld novel of things beginning in stone eggs, Thud! Garner even represents the noise of flint-knapping as " Tak, Tak, Tak, Tak, Tak..."