There is a quote I really like, I was surprised it wasn't included in the Elidor quotes on goodreads. I enjoyed the story, it's full of imagination and no small amount of dark threat. Celyn enjoyed it too, though the passage of 50 years, combined with her own limited experience of the world, did require me to explain a number of things.

Elidor has been translated into multiple languages and adapted for radio and television for CBBC in 1995. As one of the UK’s most significant and prolific children’s writers, Garner has won and been nominated for many awards, including winning the Carnegie Medal in 1968 for The Owl Service. In 2001 he was awarded an OBE. He is helped by his brothers, Nicholas and David, and sister, Helen, as they travel between the devastated city where they live with their parents and the shattered otherworld. They face trials of strength and ingenuity, threatened by forces of darkness and fear – quite apart from the anger of the demolition company trying to pull down the church where the secret entrance is. What’s more, although they pass between Elidor and Manchester, the dangers and mysteries travel with them. Static electricity is threatening their own neighbourhood almost as much as the song of Findhorn – it’s not just Elidor they have to try to save, it’s their own world too. This book was written some years ago, and it shows in the choice of words used. I did find this distracting at the beginning of the story. In fact, some of the phrases used were so weird that I had no idea what was meant. This did give the book an old fashioned feel to it, and I think this is the reason it wasn’t popular in the library. Hence, the reason it found its way to the “bargain bin”. The darkness grew,' said Malebron. 'It is always there. We did not watch, and the power of night closed on Elidor. We had so much of ease that we did not mark the signs - a crop blighted, a spring failed, a man killed. Then it was too late - war, and siege, and betrayal, and the dying of the light.'[...] As one by one the children are lured through the portal into the twilight world of Elidor, we view this through Roland's eyes, and feel what he feels. Roland is the most sensitive, the one we identify with. He is the one in the group whom nobody else will listen to, but is proved to be right. All the children are sensible and courageous, but only Roland remains clear-thinking and loyal under almost intolerable peer pressure. All the children must make choices and take on responsibilities far beyond anything their parents could understand. And here again is an irresistible tacit assumption made by older children's books, that the adults have closed minds. Adults may be cruel, stupid or risible - mere figures of fun. They may on the other hand be kind and sensible. But they are always, without a doubt, unimaginative and clueless.

What can I read next?

Alan Garner writes (yes writes - he recently published the third book in the Tales of Alderly series after a 50 YEAR gap!) in the way in which I try to write. Much of his work looks to me like mine would if I were better at it. Yet his was also a grittier world than the cosy reality of most approved children's writers. He had an "edge". He had the imagination of C.S. Lewis - but his was a darker, brooding, gutsier world altogether. Think of a pagan version of Narnia, and you're almost there. I read several novels by Alan Garner, but later discovered that after the first four, his reality became increasingly darker than my own. GENRES Fiction ClassicFiction ModernClassics ContemporaryFiction Non-Fiction The Arts Biographies History Music Philosophy Religion Other Drama Shakespeare OtherDrama Other Poetry JuniorClassics Young Adult Classics Collections&Sets Unabridged I was completely entranced by the tale of four children and their rusty relics, which opened a gateway to another world. It seemed like a cool and edgy version of “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” but set in the real world, or at least a world that I could identify with.

Catalogue Titles Authors Readers Unabridged Fiction Classic Fiction Modern Classics Contemporary Fiction Round, and round, his voice went, and through it came a noise. It was low and vibrant, like wind in a chimney. It grew louder, more taut, and the wall blurred, and the floor shook. The noise was in the fabric of the church: it pulsed with sound. Then he heard a heavy door open; and close; and the noise faded away. It was now too still in the church, and the footsteps were moving over the rubble in the passage downstairs. 'Who's that?' said Roland. The footsteps reached the stairs, and began to climb."Elidor is a children's fantasy novel by the British author Alan Garner, published by Collins in 1965. Set primarily in modern Manchester, it features four English children who enter a fantasy world, fulfill a quest there, and return to find that the enemy has followed them into our world. Translations have been published in nine languages [2] and it has been adapted for television and radio. The book is very much concerned with Roland and his search for identity, meaning and purpose in his life; he agrees to go into the mound of Vandwy to recover the treasures of Elidor for Malebron; but he gets the courage for this from his sense of loyalty to others. His brother and sister are trapped in the mound, and he feels he has no choice but to rescue them. Hence any dedication to the cause of “Good” here is unconscious and bound up in the specific act of rescuing his loved ones. It is only later than Roland begins to conceive of himself as in some way allied with Malebron in the battle between light and dark forces in Elidor. Nevertheless a quest has been undertaken, and in very traditional terms; to go into the Magic place – the place of death, the dark tower, the underworld – and rescue the good that is trapped there. In this quest, Roland is successful. He rescues Helen from the equivalent of Elfland, just as his original in the ballad does. [13]

Alan Garner (b.1934) was born in Congleton, Cheshire, and brought up in Alderley. Local history and mythology have both been significant influences on his work, which is rooted in the landscape of his childhood. Elidor was his third novel, and the only one to be illustrated, by Charles Keeping. The mythology of Elidor is woven from several different strands, including Norse, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon mythology as well as themes from Arthurian legend and medieval fables. Garner has described the book as the ‘anti-Narnia,’ and unlike the high fantasy of C. S. Lewis, Elidor is grounded in the grit of the real world. The novel was also partly inspired by a visit Garner took to the slum clearances in Salford, where he saw children playing behind a ruined church and demolished houses. Elidor is a short novel, a favourite from late childhood. Timeless, visionary, a tale of magic and myth, of hope and depair, it was a dark antidote to the happy Blyton bubble. In Alan Garner's world, reality had teeth and an edgy urban feel. Parts of his world were dark, malevolent and twisted. Primal forces were at work here and there was an impending sense of doom. And this is not the only myth that has a resonance in the story – there is a less commonly known Welsh folk-tale about a priest called Elidor (or Elidorus) who, as a child, was also granted entrance to a mysterious world. And the names of the four castles in Elidor appear in some of the oldest Irish mythology. Garner takes these mythic stories and gives them a concrete reality, one that spills into the actual concrete reality of his characters, the Watson children, who have to cope with moving house, getting to school and the suspicions of their parents while also guarding the treasures of Elidor and dealing with the threats they pose to everyone’s safety.I thought I'd read this book as a child, but no - reading it to my daughter Celyn this week has convinced me that I just remember passages of it from drama classes in my primary school when I was very small. While writing and getting published may not carry quite the same danger of universal destruction that the Watson children face in taking on the forces in Elidor, the decision of Roland and his brothers and sister to follow an uncertain path wherever it leads is an echo of Garner’s own courage. The four castles of Elidor – Findias in the South, Falias in the West, Murias in the North, and Gorias in the East – correspond to the four cities of the Tuatha Dé Danann in Irish mythology – Finias (sic), Falias, Murias, and Gorias. [7] Elidor and the Golden Ball [1] from Richard Colt Hoare (1806), The Itinerary of Archbishop Baldwin Through Wales, a translation of Giraldus Cambrensis (1191), Itinerarium Cambriae I first read this when I was 7 years old. A reread today 40 years later to my youngest who had forgotten hearing this some time ago when she was small.

The name Elidor originates in a Welsh folktale whose title is commonly translated as Elidor and the Golden Ball, described by Giraldus Cambrensis in Itinerarium Cambriae, a record of his 1188 journey across the country. Elidor was a priest who as a boy was led by dwarves to a castle of gold in a land that, while beautiful, was not illuminated by the full light of the sun. [5] This compares with Garner's description of the golden walls of Gorias contrasting with the dull sky of the land of Elidor.There has been much discussion of the ending of Elidor. Elidor is gloriously safe; but Findhorn the Unicorn is horribly dead. Does this mean that Roland is irreparably damaged by his experience? Or is Garner has saying that no victory is without its price? At any event, this is undoubtedly a book about the formation of the self-concept and about the changes and developments necessary in the individual if she or he is to cope adequately with relationships and events. To that extent it puts to Roland the traditional question; “What are you like?” Garner’s presentation of a protagonist who cannot face up to this question, is his original and personal use of the traditional framework. The four treasures of Elidor – the Spear of Ildana held by Malebron, David's sword, Nicholas's stone, and Helen's cauldron – correspond to the Four Treasures of the Tuatha Dé Danann – the Spear of Lugh, Claíomh Solais, Lia Fáil, and The Dagda's Cauldron. However, the associations between the treasures and the castles differ – in Elidor the Spear of Ildana is associated with Gorias, whereas the Irish mythological equivalent, the Spear of Lugh, is associated with Finias (although the treasure associated with Gorias, Claíomh Solais, is sometimes called the Sword of Lugh, which may explain the confusion). [7] Medieval fable [ edit ]