Red shift [Hardcover]

Alan Garner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1973

The lives of three young men in three different periods of British history converge and each influences the destiny of the others.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Red Shift, with its passionately bickering adolescent lovers and its vertiginous plunges through the wormhole of time, shook me to the core every time I read it, and still does. . . . More than any orthodox work of historical fiction, it was this weird fantasy novel which taught me to look beyond the walls of my own era, my own reality. Garner makes the past numinous, terrifyingly real: anything but passed.”
—Emma Donoghue

“Garner squeezes language into depth charges which will detonate emotions at a level where words cannot reach.”
—The Listener

“A bitter, complex, brilliant book.” —Ursula Le Guin

“Long before Philip Pullman and J. K. Rowling there was Alan Garner, a children’s author who crossed the boundaries between real and imaginary worlds—and between a young and an adult readership.”
—The Times (London) list of the 50 greatest British postwar writers

“A work of poetic imagination that will keep any adult mind at full stretch.”
—Daily Mail (London)

“. . . a magnificently multilayered novel. . . a superbly exciting piece of literature.” —The Sunday Times (London) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From the Publisher

Alan Garner's book The Owl Service was widely acclaimed:

"Without doubt Mr Alan Garner is one of the most exciting writers for young people today. He is producing work with strong plot structure, perceptive characterisation and vivid language." - Times Educational Supplement

"The Owl Service is not meant only for children or anyone else; it's a novel; and not many better novels will be published this year." - John Rowe Townsend, The Guardian

"Alan Garner is one of the outstanding present-day writers for children; and The Owl Service takes him a step further into more magical, legendary, adult worlds than he's gone so far." - Isabel Quigly, Catholic Herald

"No confirmation of the stature of Alan Garner as a writer of children's fiction is needed: if it were, his latest novel, The Owl Service, would establish it beyond doubt." - Financial Times --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 197 pages
• Publisher: Macmillan; 1St Edition edition (1973)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0027358704
• ISBN-13: 978-0027358704
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,328,897 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "hard" Young Adult book that is also great!, May 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: RED SHIFT (Mass Market Paperback)

I am amazed that Alan Garner's "Red Shift" is out of print, and also that I am the first reviewer of it on Amamzon.com

Garner's "Red Shift" is a culmination of his development as a novelist, starting with the fantasy adventure "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen", before he completely changed, and wrote his "Stone Book" quartet, stories of his ancestors, stonemason, blacksmith, and others. Increasingly, from "Weirdstone" to "Red Shift", Garner's use of fantasy moves from overt to inner. In his first books ancient forces, old gods and creatures, co-exist in our own modern world. Although Garner was not entirely original in writing such stories, it seems that his were the first that spawned many similar stories for children and adults. But the Merlin-like magician in "Weirdstone" develops into the psychological presence, a form of possession, in the modern characters of "The Owl Service" (the novel immediately before "Red Shift") who find themselves repeating the actions of love, lust, murder and revenge which are told in the Welsh myth of Llew Llaw Gyffes and Gronw Pebwyr in "The Mabingogion".

In "red Shift" the move from outer fantasy of "Weirdstone" to inner possession of modern characters in "Owl Service" becomes the shared consciousness, at moments of trancelike crisis for sets of characters living in three separate eras: post-Roman Britain, the English Civil War, and modern Manchester. An ancient Stone Age axe head is the focus of this possession-like shared consciousness.

Through "Red Shift" Garner tells three stories, each from a different time, but each set in the shared location, and each mirroring the pattern of relationships of the others. Through this book, a fourth relationship is demanded by Garner, namely the reader piecing together what is happening, and how each story connects with the others.

Few other writers attempt such complex, powerful narratives. Perhaps Robert Cormier, another difficult Young Adult writer, or William Mayne, come closest, with stories of similar narrative tangling, and emotional intensity: "I Am the Cheese" and "After the First Death" by Cormier, or "A Game of Dark" and "The Jersey Shore" by Mayne.

The experience of reading Garner, in "Red Shift", and later through the "Stone Quartet", is like that of reading poetry, or listening to music, where images, words, feelings and experiences resonate and connect, an event in one story chiming like an echo of another, forcing the reader to reconsider what has already been experenced in the light of new facets of similar actions.

Neil Philip's study of Garner "A Fine Anger" is an excellent introduction to Garner's work, and his fascinating use of literary and mythic sources.

What is "Red Shift" about? Imagine a story of a boy and girl, on the edge of falling in love, each trapped in their own cage made of different family background, tormented by the differences between one another, and by their mutual betrayals. Meanwhile in post-Roman Britain, a lost patrol of Roman soldiers, surrounded by pagan tribes, decides to go tribal - descending into their own hearts of darkness, madness, rape and murder. And, at the same time, a simple-minded lad watches his adored girlfriend raped by soldiers in the English Civil War. Flashes of epileptic insight enable each of the central male characters to see through one another's eyes, hardly comprehending what is happening. The "red shift" itself is many things - a red petticoat, a bloody recourse to action, the hurtling apart of distant galazies, and the corresponding rushing apart of lonely people.

Very subtle. Undoubtedly difficult. But deeply rewarding!

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bitter, subtle, complex, December 19, 2005

By 

John Bonavia (Needham, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Red Shift (Paperback)

A bitter, dense, vigorous book about the violence and betrayals we inflict on each other. So much is lost along the way - and although there is some survival at the end, what kind of survival is it?

There are three interwoven stories, spanning three points in time and one in space - the times are the later Roman Empire in Britain, the British Civil War of the 17th century, and the modern age. The space is a part of Cheshire around an iconic hill, Mow Cop. And the three are linked - apart from their biting emotional motifs - by an object, a prehistoric axe head, that appears in all, a talisman of the ages.

In the earliest thread, a ragged remnant of a Roman legion - just a few soldiers, conscripts from who-knows-where - have to deal with the wild and ancient tribes, as vicious and crafty as the soldiers. Wonderfully, Garner has made them talk the lingo of modern squaddies, because that's how they would have sounded to each other. In the Civil War, villagers take refuge in a church from the prowling band of enemy - but not all the hatred is political...In today's world, a near-genius innocent, a sacred fool (who quotes Lear's lines for Tom the fool) is paired with a girl above his social level and distrusted by his parents: there are no swords here, but "words" is an anagram of "sword" and the pain is the same.

Incredible tight, elliptical exchanges: you may have to read a page twice to "get" everything that is happening (and then you won't be sure). American readers may have a problem with the British idiom of the 70's and some archaic words of the Civil War times, and the Cheshire idiom, but it's worth it.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Entirely confusing yet ultimately rewarding, July 9, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: RED SHIFT (Mass Market Paperback)

My review of this book will never be as articulate as the one written before mine, but I would like to express my opinion of "Red Shift". I have recommended it to so many friends who have all given up before they have reached 50 pages in. I must admit that I was tempted to do the same, though I cannot be more glad to have persevered. The story finds clarity in the last few pages (and in the wonderful encoded passage at the end!) If you have time to devote to this book, it is worth all the effort. Truly greater than "The Wierdstone".