Fairytales of Gold

by Alan Garner, Michael Foreman (Illustrator)

Four new and wholly original stories, each evoking the themes and tempo of traditional fairy tales, are highlighted on every page by full-color paintings

Genres: Fantasy, Fairy Tales, Adventure, Fiction, Childrens

202 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

About the author

Alan Garner OBE (born 17 October 1934) is an English novelist who is best known for his children's fantasy novels and his retellings of traditional British folk tales. His work is firmly rooted in the landscape, history and folklore of his native county of Cheshire, North West England, being set in the region and making use of the native Cheshire dialect.

Born into a working-class family in Congleton, Cheshire, Garner grew up around the nearby town of Alderley Edge, and spent much of his youth in the wooded area known locally as 'The Edge', where he gained an early interest in the folklore of the region. Studying at Manchester Grammar School and then Oxford University, in 1957 he moved to the nearby village of Blackden, where he bought and renovated an Early Modern building known as Toad Hall. His first novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, was published in 1960. A children's fantasy novel set on the Edge, it incorporated elements of local folklore in its plot and characters. Garner completed a sequel, The Moon of Gomrath (1963), but left the third book of the trilogy he had envisioned. Instead he produced a string of further fantasy novels, Elidor (1965), The Owl Service (1967) and Red Shift (1973).

Turning away from fantasy as a genre, Garner produced The Stone Book Quartet (1979), a series of four short novellas detailing a day in the life of four generations of his family. He also published a series of British folk tales which he had rewritten in a series of books entitled Alan Garner's Fairy Tales of Gold (1979), Alan Garner's Book of British Fairy Tales (1984) and A Bag of Moonshine (1986). In his subsequent novels, Strandloper (1996) and Thursbitch (2003), he continued writing tales revolving around Cheshire, although without the fantasy elements which had characterised his earlier work. In 2012, he finally published a third book in the Weirdstone trilogy.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Garner

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Mathew · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is very easy to be dismissive here of Garner's writing. The narrative is very short and there is no elaboration here of place or people. Some of this is down to the fact that Fairytales of Gold is a collection of four very short retellings of folktales presented in concise, brief narrative format either for the early reader or as a way of tempting readers into the world of fairytale. Whatever the case, to see the stories in the way would be to ignore the 'theme and tempo' of traditional tales which will always be poised with its prose and rich with its content and Garner is master of this. What remains a delight to all though are Foreman's full-colour illustrations. I forget how well he does traditional tale. His watercolours evoke that rich, visual world of endless landscapes and colour monsters so well and in this hardback collection a world of floating heads and ugly ogres springs to life and is bound to make their mark on the reader.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Intended for the under 7s (I'm guessing that's the target audience), this original collection can bring as much joy to an adult as well (take my word for it). These four stories, like their inspirations be they Andersen, Grimm, or even Aesop, are darker than their titles suggest and may bring a lot of pleasure to a child, but raise a lot of questions for an adult. Worth a look.

[Neil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don't let the fact that this book is c. 200 pages fool you this is just four very short stories each page often contains no more than one sentence. The book is clearly aimed at the very young, quite a change of direction from "Red Shift." The writing is direct with, as you'd expect with Garner, not a word wasted.

The four tales are:
The Golden Brothers
The Girl Of The Golden Gate
The Three Golden Heads Of The Well
The Princess And The Golden Mane

They seem to be based on traditional tales but I had never come across them before. The best is "The Three Golden Heads In The Well"
The book is illustrated on every page by Michael Foreman some of the illustrations (especially those for "The Three Golden Heads In The Well") are quite effective but sadly many aren't.

[Bernard Macdonagh]

Lovely stories and the illustrations are wonderful.....The Well at the World's End is very strong

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alan Garner's fairy tales are not told in the usual way and that's what I really enjoyed about this book and the stories.