Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Timothy Rogers

Critical Essay by Timothy Rogers

[Holly from the Bongs] is one of the most delightful books I have looked at, read, listened to, for a very long time…. [It includes] the full text of the play, in which Alan Garner has skilfully included a Mummers' play based on traditional sources…. How lucky are the children of Goostrey; but how lucky are we also to share in this experience.

Timothy Rogers, "Fiction: 'Holly from the Bongs'," in The School Librarian and School Library Review, Vol. 15, No. 1, March, 1967, p. 106.

Some of [Elidor] is hilarious … some is harrowing, but it rarely rises above the level of formula fantasy. The obvious weaknesses are a certain flatness of style and the lack of definition of character, the stillborn aspect of faerieland: we don't know Elidor or the children intimately enough to care what happens to them, nor to regret, in the case of the...
(read more)