Also: small towns and villages in england are and always have been weird. We're always one funny look in a pub away from a wicker man here. There's continuity for you.
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The story starts on Midwinter's Eve (tomorrow) so lots of us do a readathon in real(ish) time with the hashtag #TheDarkIsReading. But any time over the xmas period is perfect. It's such a good series of books.
V interested to know what they make of it! I think I would, as a kid, be very furious on Jane's behalf (and furious AT her for accepting her prescribed gender role probably because I didn't understand the patriarchy properly)
Ah, he's just reading The Dark is Rising (because Christmas). I read Over Sea Under Stone at about ten. I don't remember being bothered by the gender stuff - I was probably inured to it by years of Blyton. I just loved the old school adventure.
YES … The Dark is Rising is brilliant. Have reread a couple times as an adult and can confirm. Susan Cooper’s prose is clean, evocative and of a compelling enough rhythm to make this book an all time favourite of any genre.
If you approach British fantasy kidlit of the 1970s from a 'folk horror' point of view I think there is so much to enjoy! There is definitely a PHD to be done on this.... or maybe someone's beaten me to it. From The Dark is Rising to Straw Dogs, perhaps... (still working on the title 😉).
You’re onto something here. Written just before the 70s, but really became a thing in that decade, John Christopher’s Tripods books are a very British and a very folk horror take on sci-fi/fantasy.
(1967/68).
Because I have deadlines aplenty & just two days to do everything, I’ve just disappeared down a Tripods rabbit hole. Am aghast at the difference between BBC versions and the books: particularly the Eloise storyline.
Such a bold and dark plot in the books, can see why BBC balked for teatime viewing.
I will, just as soon as I've dragged this enormous Yule log full of unsettling magic into my hearth and heard some spooky tales from auntie Jemima about why I shouldn't mess with the stone pixie guarding the gate, whilst cracking the ice on the pond and worrying if the wolves are running tonight. 😁
The underground passage in The Weirdstone of Brisinghamen is still the most horrifying chapter I've ever read in a work for children, and still gives me the cold grue
Cooper and Alan Garner both have that strong “British Weird” vibe - I’m sure there’s another contemporary big name writing for children as well - that must have grown out of something cultural; I don’t know if it’s a reaction to a childhood impacted by the war, maybe, or something else.
Penelope Lively perhaps? A yearning for the past presented through mythology? Or a way to explain the now by looking to the past? I'm sure living through WW2 had an influence on these writers.
That reminds me - I bought Charles Butler's "Four British Fantasists: Place and Culture in the Children's Fantasies of Penelope Lively, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones, and Susan Cooper" a few years ago and never got round to reading it. I must dig it out!
I think I read a few of the sequence, but The Dark is Rising is still one of my favourite books: it had a huge influence on me and I still love it (and still have the copy I read when I was 9 or 10). I hope you love it too!
I want to say Catherine Fisher but can’t remember enough of Darkhenge to say. The general of this thread vibe feels very much like Box of Delights and The Snow Spider (TV series) - mythical and magical childhoods.
A similar sort of mythology based, though leaning more Irish and published '85 rather than 60s/70s, is Hounds of the Morrigan by Pat O'Shea. Incredible book.
I also think Margaret Mahy has a similar type of feel.
I think they probably had a few Kiwi-isms ironed out but The Changeover is set a couple of suburbs over from me and the protagonist is Māori (with a white mum).
E Nesbit felt a bit cosier than this still though - something in the tone maybe? Definitely weird but weird like...E Nesbit is Red Dwarf and Susan Cooper is Twin peaks? (ok terrible comparisons)
No, I think I get where you’re coming from. Though it’s been longer since I read E Nesbit. Another fit might be When Marnie Was There by Joan G Robinson which I remember being very army and mysterious to 10 year old me.
Diana Wynne Jones feels very much a corollary, a slightly easier writer to access on the way to where they are content and tone-wise. there's also Jenny Nimmo's Snow Spider books that seem to be a bit overlooked now but very much cover the same mythical real world crossover scape
there was a tv show back in the day but it's amazing how it as a book has just fallen off the radar in the years since. like Moonacre/the Little White Horse
I’ve always seen DWJ as a bit separate from Cooper & Garner - she feels more magic & less Weird, doesn’t she? Maybe that’s why she’s more accessible. (Archer’s Goon is still my favourite of hers: I loved how she weaponises everyday life) Oddly, I don’t think I’ve ever read any Jenny Nimmo!
I think that maybe depends which book you land on. Her humour is often wonderfully ludicrous, but the more autobiographical of her books can be very bleak regarding the situations children have to live through due to dreadful adults…
so, broadly yes, but there's some darkness at times to her work, and something gently grown-up about some of it, which reads like a kind of The Weird when you're a kid
there's one of hers with the name Polly in the title? i was obsessed with that for a while, iirc a nice portal fantasy that genuinely felt like the MC grew up in a way that didn't feel limiting or like she'd lost something
That scene when Barney is abducted as the carnival dances around him is *very* Wickerman! ❤️
I've just finished OSUS and enjoyed it far more than I anticipated. Some of the writing is beautiful and the atmospheric sense of jeopardy is fantastic! The long grass outside Hasting's house was creepy... 😂
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The second one is very Christmassy (one of the great children's Christmas books) so you've timed it well!
(1967/68).
Such a bold and dark plot in the books, can see why BBC balked for teatime viewing.
I also think Margaret Mahy has a similar type of feel.
And I did see the film adaptation... Was not a fan. I found some of the changes a bit baffling.
Both genuinely brilliant.
I've just finished OSUS and enjoyed it far more than I anticipated. Some of the writing is beautiful and the atmospheric sense of jeopardy is fantastic! The long grass outside Hasting's house was creepy... 😂