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Alan Garner
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The Voice That Thunders Paperback – Import, August 31, 2010

by Alan Garner (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 77 ratings
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Alan Garner is an exceptional lecturer and essayist. This collection, taken form the work of more that twenty years, explores an enviable range of scholarly archaeology, myth, language, education, philosophy, the spiritual quest, mental health, literature, music and film. The book also serves as a poetic autobiography of one of England's best-loved but least public writers. He hears himself declared dead at the age of six; he draws on the deep vein of a rural working-class childhood in a family of craftsmen who instilled the passion for excellence and for innovation and humour. The disciplines he learnt as a Classicist give a shape and clarity to that passion in this richly various book that would have fascinated his forebears, whose work and lives are also celebrated here. This most unusual, most candid, most vivid picture of an English family and its home, its country's history, is also a devastating revelation of a writer's own life. Alan Garner's account of his mental illness will become a classic, and each strand of the book will be a source of fascination to anyone who has ever fallen under the spell of an Alan Garner story, as also to all who concern themselves with the craft of writing.
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  1. Print length
    256 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Harvill Press
  4. Publication date
    August 31, 2010
  5. Dimensions
    5.31 x 0.75 x 8.5 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1846554721
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1846554728
  8. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harvill Press; UK ed. edition (August 31, 2010)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1846554721
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1846554728
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.7 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.31 x 0.75 x 8.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 77 ratings

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Alan Garner

Alan Garner

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4.6 out of 5 stars
77 global ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

  • Gregg G. Brown
    5.0 out of 5 stars Hidden Insights Revealed
    Reviewed in the United States on June 30, 2018
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    Real insights into a unique artist provided in his own voice. Garner shares deeply held convictions and informed opinions on the deepest aspects of the craft of writing.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Maria Illich
    5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Have!!!
    Reviewed in the United States on January 9, 2019
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    Awesome seller, awesome book!!!
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  • John Anderson
    4.0 out of 5 stars Variations on a theme
    Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2001
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    This book kicked around on the floor of my study for 6 weeks, then I read it straight through, then I immediately went back & re-read big chunks. This probably ISN'T a good idea. I am a big fan of Garner (see other reviews) but there were times in VOICE when I felt by putting this series of essays together that rather than telling us stories he in fact showed us that he has just one story to tell. The same phrases keep popping up in different settings, and read all together this becomes irritating (I kept thinking "you just said that", forgetting that these were notes for talks often given several years apart). I think I would have enjoyed the collection more if I had read each essay seperately, with sufficient distance between them to allow me to miss the repetition. That being said, there is fascinating stuff here, including some very witty & pertinent comments on writing, creativity, madness, education, and response to one's critics. There is also a wonderful "look behind the scenes" at how some of Garner's books came to be. Here there may in fact be some value in the reading of the essays all at once -one can track an early-middle-age dismissal of his first two books (sorry Mr. Garner, I STILL think they are outstanding!) to an eventual coming-to-terms-and-acceptance of their value (Whew!. The discussion of STRANDLOPER is worth the price of admission by itself. SO, my copy of VOICE is now heavily read, heavily annotated & will be inflicted in parts on generations of my students and friends. Get it, read it, but my advice is savor it, this is a collection that shouldn't be rushed.
    11 people found this helpful
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  • C. Jannuzi
    5.0 out of 5 stars A Book Whose Title Does it Justice
    Reviewed in the United States on December 12, 2000
    I grew up reading Tolkien and Mervyn Peake and also Alan Garner. In his fiction (much of which gets classified as for children, adolescents and young adults), he is much less wordy than those two, but often more oblique and thematically ambitious. What has always struck me about his fiction is how it can be difficult without frustrating, how it can surpass the reader without making them feel stupid.
    Garner's acclaimed body of work invites multiple responses and interpretations; however, this collection of essays and autobiographical pieces will definitely help the reader to get a better grasp on how the author thinks.
    I thought this book particularly insightful on the connection between artistic creativity and depression (yes, creative genius does seem to be associated with it). It was also interesting to read what an accomplished author has to say about writing for publication--yes, people struggling to write literature for publication could learn a lot from a master who has not compromised his vision yet still enjoys considerable success. Still yet another fascinating topic of discussion was the connection a writer must form between a certain place and the writing: the Manchester area and Wales serve as the geographical, historical and mythological backdrops for much of Garner's fantasy, yet a recent work successfully incorporates wilderness Australia.
    If you are a fan of Garner (why not check out a title like "Red Shift" or "Strandloper" at Amazon today?) or a writer who wishes to succeed at publishing (most do!), this will prove a very valuable and insightful book.
    10 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

  • Elginson
    5.0 out of 5 stars Moving and inspiring insights from Alan Garner
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 27, 2014
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    If you are one of the many millions of Alan Garner fans you need to read this book. It's not a novel, it's a collection of talks and seminars that he has given through the years, but together they combine to produce what actually reads as an autobiography, or at least a narrative of his formative years and how his creativity has developed. It seems hard to believe that Garner is now in his 80th year. His powerful writing has thrilled and moved so many, including me.
    Born in Congleton, Cheshire, from a family that has roots centuries deep in the local landscape and culture, all Garner's life and work has been shaped by a profound sense of the place. Garner and the landscape around Alderley Edge are inconceivable without each other. The place has shaped him in the deepest sense and he now shapes our own view of it. He had a sickly childhood, hearing himself pronounced dead at the age of six! Happy years at Manchester Grammar School and Oxford, where he studied Latin, Greek, Ancient History and Philosophy followed. He returned to live near The Edge and to embrace its history and its legends that so much suffuse all his work.
    In this book he takes us through the beginning of his writing and the obsessive care with which he writes. Most books took many years to complete. He shares his interest in the local archaeology and the mythology with which he so deeply engages. His own family played a crucial role in the development of the Alderley legend: a great-grandfather who carved the Wizard into the rock by the well and who made the stone circle that is referred to in the Weirdstone. All of Garner's work is permeated with a profound sense of geography (I read him with a map close to hand) and I doubt if he ever invented a fictional place in any text. If you look closely and follow the clues in the books, you'll find it's all there on the ground.
    Readers of Garner will know that from The Weirdstone on there is a crucial content of legend and ancient story-telling, and it's probably true to say that he never wrote a book that wasn't, at some level, about myth, culminating supremely in 'Strandloper'. (1996) In 'The Voice That Thunders' he shares with us his deepest convictions about belief, language, what it is to be human and the universality of story-telling. Along the way he also describes honestly and bravely his own personal battle with depression.
    It is not an exaggeration to say that Garner's books changed my life, leading me into a life-long interest in history and legend. I know he has done the same for many others. If, like me, you want to understand the very private man behind the texts then you must read 'The Voice That Thunders'. It is the very essence of Alan Garner. And may he live to write for another 80 years.
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  • Richard H
    5.0 out of 5 stars A must read book.
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 18, 2018
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    If you enjoy Alan Garner's storytelling this is a must read. Many different essays but each in his deep, thoughtful clearly written style. Absorbingly easy to read. Great sense of place and landscape, and people in the landscape. He brings a great sense of value to everything he writes about.
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  • Iris Sher
    5.0 out of 5 stars A must for Alan Garner readers of any age! Please read.
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 9, 2020
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    An amazing book written by a master of his craft. His children’s books, I found, hold their imagination and deepen their understanding of good literature and what it can mean asa
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  • gavin mercer
    4.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant writer.
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 5, 2020
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    Truelly great writer. Essays a bit hit and miss but the good stuff is REALLY good.
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  • Kindle Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Real-life Garner
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 15, 2012
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    Alan Garner is best known for his books for younger teenagers, with their strong elements of folklore: first, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath, both set around Alderley Edge in Cheshire, but stepping from the everyday world to a parallel world full of terror and delight. Then there's Elidor, where an ordinary family find they have a foot in two worlds and have to work through world-shaking events. Garner's Stone Book Quartet changes the focus slightly to cover times, rather than worlds; Red Shift deals with the way one's world changes with adolescence. The Owl Service visits Wales and Welsh myth and legend, bringing together the strands of place and time.

    Alan Garner's later novels, Thursbitch and Strandloper, are less for children than for adults, but again the blend of time, place and mythologies is a powerful mix.

    In "The Voice That Thunders" Alan Garner describes events and places in his own life that have influenced and inspired his work. The reader gains a real sense of Garner's ability to wander in alternative realities, and we see how powerful a tool his imagination is, and how powerful an influence Alderley Edge has on that imagination.

    "The Voice That Thunders" is highly recommended for anyone who has read and enjoyed Garner's fiction. More appropriate for adults and older children than for the under-12s.
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