Customer Reviews

Stone Book Quartet (Flamingo Modern Classics)

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These books are better appreciated by young adults in the 16 years+ (and even more so by not-so-young adults!)They are wonderfully subtle and young people may not appreciate the beauty of the writing or the quiet character development. They are small jewels of rare beauty--but glowing rather than sparkling. I learned only later that these are stories based on Alan Garner's own family history---they stretch back at least 100 years or more into the past. My favorite of the four stories is the first in chronological order: the Stone Book. It beautifully weaves the past and present telling the tale of a stone-cutter and his daughter who wants, more than any other gift, to own a real book at a time when the price of a book was beyond the family's financial means. The father crafts a stone book, perfect-in-every-detail, for the girl to carry to church (a gift which at first disappoints her in the way that handmade clothes disappoint children who want "story-bought" fashions). As I read on to the underground scene (where the father reveals how his family got their distinctive carved "stone mark" signature),I could feel the hair raising at the back of my neck...it is very powerfully written and one of my favorite "reading" memories.

Please read the reviews on the Amazon.co.uk site--Alan Garner is better known in Britain---they are excellent and say better than I can what the books are all about. BUT PLEASE READ THESE BOOKS--THEY ARE SO WONDERFUL!!! I highly recommend them. I have never forgotten these books and bought a set for each of my four children....I love them!