There are many close encounters in store for the reader of Alan Garner's work, and this is certainly true of [The Aimer Gate]. The language is cut concisely, the style exact and easy like a kind of music….
These books [of the Stone Book quartet] stand somewhat like four movements of Vivaldi's music. And there is music in everyone, an ophicleide or a cornet, and always a song. Although appearing last, The Aimer Gate is third in time and even in classic sonata form, the story of Chorley 1860–1940. But there is far more time than 80 years aback of Chorley. Two of the first ages of men, stone and iron (the later in Granny Reardun), were long ago; and they run through the village as powerfully as the measurement of time and wind at chapel and church. Some may feel that to honour the craft of stonemason and smith, hand-harvesting fields too steep for combines, or figures like old Faddock Allman with both legs blasted off in the Boer-War (a brilliant characterization, this) smells of errant romanticism.
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