Boneland

It is almost impossible to say anything about this book without spoilers, so I hope that anyone who reads this has already read the book.

It is a sequel to [b:The Weirdstone of Brisingamen|694997|The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (Tales of Alderley, #1)|Alan Garner|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1177345171s/694997.jpg|279305] and [b:The Moon of Gomrath|694942|The Moon of Gomrath (Tales of Alderley, #2)|Alan Garner|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1177344653s/694942.jpg|1219230]. In those books twelve-year-old Colin and Susan go to stay on a farm near Alderley Edge in Cheshire, England, and discover that the Edge is haunted by all kinds of strange creatures, malicious goblins, suspicious fairies and elves and the like, and there is a strange woman, a witch, who seems to have evil designs on them, and especially a stone that Susan had inherited.

Some of the creatures, good and evil, that they encounter are from local folklore, and others from stories from further afield. Eventually the children overcome the forces of evil, and are left in peace for a while.

[b:Boneland|2393210|Boneland|Jeffrey Thomas|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1304142459s/2393210.jpg|2400222] is set much further in the future, where Colin has grown up and become a professor of astrophysics.

One problem that Professor Colin Whisterfield has is that though he has an exceptionally good memory, he can remember very little of his childhood before he was 13.

He works at the Jodrell Bank radio telescope, and spends much of his time at work trying to find a twin sister that he thought he had, whom he believes has vanished into the Pleiades, riding on a horse. He has a bad conscience about wasting his employers' time on this personal project, and so at one point he resigns, but his resignation is not accepted.

He is also worried about his missing sister, whom he can hardly remember, and thinks he might be going mad, so he visits a psychotherapist, Meg, She tries to probe his memories, but there are some places in his past where he both wants to go and fears to go.

This is where the story gripped me as a reader. Having read the first two books, I wanted to know what had happened to Colin's sister Susan. In reading the earlier books I hadn't known that they were twins, and liked Susan more as a character; I thought Colin was a bit of a wimp.

But why should I care what happens to a fictional character when another fictional character is looking for her? You can't dismiss Susan as imaginary (within the story) when she's been in two books you've read before. Was Colin imagining her all along? Were the first two books just about a dream he was having, and that he couldn't remember? But then he himself is a character in a book, so why do I want to know what happened to Susan?

Colin also keeps having dreams of long ago of a primitive tribe that once lived in the place, and also of having betrayed the guardian of a secret place on Alderley Edge (this is Cadellin Silverbrow, from [b:The Weirdstone of Brisingamen|694997|The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (Tales of Alderley, #1)|Alan Garner|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1177345171s/694997.jpg|279305]). So Colin becomes a kind of self-appointed guardian of Alderley Edge and its history, even though tantalising gaps hide essential parts of that history from him.

Then Colin is shown a stone that was discovered on the site of the main telescope at Jodrell Bank, in a place that was geologically impossible for it to be unless someone put it there. It seems to have a personal message for him.

He shows the stone to Meg, who tells him that she has done research in the birth, marriage and death records, and can throw some light on Colin's forgotten past before he was 13. He did have a twin sister, but at Colin's insistence Meg does not mention her name. She disappeared one night with a horse belonging to the Mossop family, who were their guardians. The horse was later found on an island in Redesmere, but though divers searched and the lake was dragged, no trace of a body was found. In [b:The Weirdsone of Brisingamen|694997|The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (Tales of Alderley, #1)|Alan Garner|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1177345171s/694997.jpg|279305] Redesmere was where Angharad Goldenhand had fastened a magical silver bracelet around Susan's left wrist, on an island they had reached without crossing the water.

Then Meg says goodbye, and is gone. Colin can find no trace of her in the phone book, and the house where he went for his therapy sessions has been unoccupied for years. Even the taxi driver who took him there has gone. So did he ever have a sister? It was Meg who had told him about her birth certificate and the coroners report, so how could be be sure that Susan was real if Meg herself was not real?

That's a literary trope I recall only seeing once before, in [b:Sophie's World|10959|Sophie's World|Jostein Gaarder|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1343459906s/10959.jpg|4432325] by [author Hostein Gaarder]

Row, row, row your boar
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream.