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I have written before about my fondness for British children’s fantasy of a certain vintage. It’s atmospheric and well-written in a particular way that I like and don’t often see elsewhere. Even if I don’t think it’s entirely successful or to my taste, I’m never sorry I read it.
A Castle of Bone (1972) is an odd melding of two subgenres, the wacky adventures with a magical item, and the numinous journey into a magical world of psychological or symbolic significance.
It starts with a literal bang, when a live pig bursts out of a closet in a boy’s room and goes madly rampaging through the house and then the city, then backtracks to explain what led up to that. Two sets of brothers and sisters (brash Penn and more-than-meets-the-eye Anna; artist Hugh and practical Jean) live next door to each other. Hugh acquires a cupboard which returns objects to earlier states of being; the pig was originally his leather wallet. The kids begin experimenting with it, in a pleasingly scientific manner, but find that it does not follow any discernible rules beyond that.
Meanwhile, every night Hugh dreams of a mysterious landscape, with strange people, a forest, and a castle he feels compelled to enter. Every night, he gets just a little bit closer…
The prose is precise and evocative, a pleasure to read just for itself. The characters work fine as convincing light sketches, but don’t quite bear the weight of the more psychological/symbolic parts. (Anna comes closest, possibly because it’s not from her point of view.) However, those parts are beautifully written and feel genuinely magical, concluding in a revelation that would have worked even better with more character depth, but works anyway of its own force.
I’m a little surprised this book isn’t better-known. Maybe it’s too weird or too flawed, but it seems like the kind of book that would stick in one’s memory, if only for the climax. Definitely recommended if you like this sort of thing.
Now available on Kindle: A Castle Of Bone
A Castle of Bone (1972) is an odd melding of two subgenres, the wacky adventures with a magical item, and the numinous journey into a magical world of psychological or symbolic significance.
It starts with a literal bang, when a live pig bursts out of a closet in a boy’s room and goes madly rampaging through the house and then the city, then backtracks to explain what led up to that. Two sets of brothers and sisters (brash Penn and more-than-meets-the-eye Anna; artist Hugh and practical Jean) live next door to each other. Hugh acquires a cupboard which returns objects to earlier states of being; the pig was originally his leather wallet. The kids begin experimenting with it, in a pleasingly scientific manner, but find that it does not follow any discernible rules beyond that.
Meanwhile, every night Hugh dreams of a mysterious landscape, with strange people, a forest, and a castle he feels compelled to enter. Every night, he gets just a little bit closer…
The prose is precise and evocative, a pleasure to read just for itself. The characters work fine as convincing light sketches, but don’t quite bear the weight of the more psychological/symbolic parts. (Anna comes closest, possibly because it’s not from her point of view.) However, those parts are beautifully written and feel genuinely magical, concluding in a revelation that would have worked even better with more character depth, but works anyway of its own force.
I’m a little surprised this book isn’t better-known. Maybe it’s too weird or too flawed, but it seems like the kind of book that would stick in one’s memory, if only for the climax. Definitely recommended if you like this sort of thing.
Now available on Kindle: A Castle Of Bone
