William Mayne has never made any concessions to the lazy or inattentive reader: he has never written the fully-automated book. In any case, we cannot all like the same things, and even among books of comparable merit there must always be some that strike a more popular note than others. Nevertheless, the impression of Mayne as a writer of somewhat rarefied excellence—one who operates at a high literary altitude where the air is thin—still persists, and may have some justification. Re-reading m...

[What William Mayne's] writing has shown is that stories for children need not drive straight from opening to end; they can shape themselves by a sort of sly oblique process, emerge sideways and even backwards out of dialogue and hints. In fact, all his stories have strong narrative spines; but they are not rigid ones. He has also come so close to the true nature of children's talk and to the way they feel and think that it must be more difficult than it was for a writer of any sensitiveness t...

In The Unreluctant Years, Lillian H. Smith says "that a new book's claim to stand beside a well-loved favorite rests in the degree to which it possesses the magic of a Lewis Carroll or a Stevenson or a Mark Twain." With what infinite certainty do we realize in Mayne's books that children do things 'with blitheness,' are endlessly searching for lasting truth, and in the process, reveal to us the heart of the matter. "The eager, reaching, elusive spirit of chil...

William Mayne's name must inevitably appear frequently in any discussion of the late twentieth-century children's book. Not only because, despite conflicting views about his work, all critics agree that it is important, but also because he has written so many different kinds of book, for so many different ages. He is the one living writer of real stature who has already established a secure reputation. Whatever else he may write from now on he has written sufficient to demonstrate an instincti...

William Mayne is the great "problem" amongst modern children's writers. Everyone seems agreed that he is a writer of great subtlety and complexity, that he has an uncanny knack of seeing the world through the eyes of children, and that he is the most assured stylist of all modern children's authors. Yet he remains obstinately unread by children, and short of saying that he is a very sophisticated writer, which he is, no one has satisfactorily explained why. I do not intend, in th...

William Mayne's Earthfasts, which puts him triumphantly among that small group who have shown such an audacious and original grasp of the possibilities of time fantasy, [lures us into a kind of magic]. It is one which, rather miraculously for a fantasy, manages to absorb into itself and to interlace throughout the book, not only legend and folklore, but the kind of dry, witnessing, factual exchanges one would expect to hear at an ESP conference, as well as observations of the author's, through...

[Mayne's] first published story was Follow the Footprints, the story of a "treasure hunt," a motif which William Mayne has developed with freshness and originality in the majority of his books. Caroline and Andrew Blake come with their parents to live in an old Tollhouse in Cumberland. From local legends the children learn of treasure hidden in the former abbey of Saint Elda and set out to find it…. The children are portrayed as being staunchly independent, clever, but never too ...

At first sight Alice Dyson might seem to be in the same position in William Mayne's It [as the character of Anne in Robert Westall's The Watch House]. But though this girl of nearly twelve might seem to be an obvious medium through which a spirit would reach out to the world of everyday, it is not her state of mild discontent which emotionally directs the release of "It". Instead, the plot of the story—as circular as the position of the four crosses at the city boundary, a...

Set in the Yorkshire dales, [A Grass Rope] is a treasure hunt, like so many of William Mayne's books, but with the difference that one of the characters, young Mary, believes so firmly in magic that her interpretation of events dominates the story rather than her parents's common-sense or Adam Forrest's grammar-school reasoning. (p. 140) It is certainly not inappropriate to use the word 'magic' of a story where the author makes you aware of the irrational all the time, the...

It seems to me that Over the Hills and Far Away and A Game of Dark are as important for their exploration of time and place as ever they are for the stories that they have to tell. In both books we stand like Magra and Korva 'surrounded by a misty edge where one time ran into another' and it is the uncanny skill with which Mayne summons up … an utterly convincing past and mingles it with the present in a particular place that gives these two books their peculiarly haunting quality. The ...

William Mayne's prose style has a club foot. For the first few pages of ["A Game of Dark"], the phraseology seems awkward, ill-assorted and confusing…. And then very subtly Mayne's unique rhythms begin to assert themselves. The reader finds he has fallen into step with them and is no longer parsing sentences to get at their meaning. The gracelessness has become a kind of power instead, a power well suited to such a strange tale as this. Donald Jackson is a 14-year-old boy ...

[A Swarm in May] will have limited appeal. The writer presupposes a rather extensive knowledge of music and a knowledge of the slang and colloquialisms of England. The legend of the beekeeper and the ancient custom of presenting the candles to the bishop is charming but does not furnish sufficient spark for a boy's story today. This book is for the special child who has some training and real interest in the life of a chorister. (p. 149) Ruth Weeden Stewart, in Junior Libraries (reprinte...

William Mayne is one of the most considerable, and certainly in some respects the most interesting writer for children now and [A Game of Dark] is undoubtedly his best book. Less rich and localized in its fantasy than Earthfasts; less rich in human terms than Ravensgill; not as affectionately funny as A Swarm in May, it is still all those things in a highly concentrated and synthesized form, besides demonstrating Mayne's recurring obsession with mysterious family pasts and relationships. And it goes ...

We [teachers] might have missed the point about William Mayne…. You have to walk into one of his books sideways—it's an excellent exercise in being a crab, right down to having your eyes on stalks. The books he writes are mysterious, oblique books, the relief of reading which lies in the holiday they give you from the common effort in which we are normally engaged to make a sort of stodgy continuity out of the events and ideas and perceptions in which we are involved. William Mayne I th...

It does not follow, of course, that a writer who places a child at the narrative centre of his tale necessarily or even intentionally forges an alliance with children…. William Mayne, always published as a children's author but notoriously little read by children and much read by adults, may, for all I know, intend to be a writer for children. But what the tone of his books actually achieves, as Charles Sarland brilliantly uncovered [see excerpt above], is an implied author who is an observer ...

It is not about IT, a familiar spirit, nor even about Alice, a twelve-year-old who wins a cathedral school scholarship, but about the power of imagination and the reality of free will. Alice, like [J.R.R. Tolkien's] Frodo, inherits a ring of power and can choose whether or not to wield it. The power is represented by the demon, who brings her nine rings by which it could master her; Alice, choosing to retain her freedom, rejects them all and eventually makes a tenth by which she can master the demon....

The day you start work is the initiation ritual. For Mason Ross [in The Incline] it means more than 'going to business' at the bank; it includes passing to the men's side and seeing the world of the quarry, where until now his father seemed unchallenged, as a microcosm of human insecurity and his father no stronger than others. (p. 259) Although we now know how to become enmeshed in Mayne's characters despite the external simplicity of the situation, we can never capture in a sho...

If you were to accuse Mr. Mayne of being 'uncompromising', he would probably stare back at you blankly as one who, despite a formidable vocabulary, has never encountered the word. If, in a given situation, little girls choose to behave petulantly and kick Dad on his bare shins then the narrator must record the sorry fact;… [matters like this], however odd, must take their place in the narrative. To compromise by wrapping them up in large dramatic statements would somehow make them incre...

Possibly because I am not primarily concerned with children, but rather with books and literary theory, I feel that Mayne is a major writer, who should be recognized as such. That opinion is based on the oeuvre, rather than on any single book…. In his style, Mayne is an original, one of the few true stylists of the twentieth century; if the language echoes a somewhat idealistic view of a child's perceptive processes, it is nonetheless at its best with the apparently inconsequential, avoiding p...

Although he lacks the emotional intensity of [Alan] Garner, Mayne does have a sense of story; and despite his willfully oblique manner of style and method, he can convey the significance of events in such books as Earthfasts, Ravensgill, and A Game of Dark…. But although he displays in The Jersey Shore his flair for catching colloquial characteristics of speech and idiosyncrasies of character, he suggests a situation without developing it and tells a mere wisp of a story…. Until the epilogue, ...

The pace of the plot of William Mayne's latest tour de force [The Battlefield] is slow and measured, country style…. The climax is conceivable only because by the time it comes the girls have woven themselves into the readers' consciousness by the quaint acuteness of their speech, their 'cleverness' in the northern sense. The author exploits the way they experiment with language before reality encroaches on metaphor. The result is an exploration in depth of sense experienc...

In Max's Dream William Mayne has returned to the Corn-wall of A Year and a Day, to the 1890's when, in a small community tightly organised, thirteen-year-old Katie, servant in training to Mrs. Veary, cherishes an unspoken love for Max, the boy who lies in the room above, dominating the household with his precocious speech and his physical helplessness. The story is distanced from the reader not only in date but also in the manner of its telling, for Katie, an old woman waiting for death, is lo...

To approach Max's Dream the reader has to switch into the rhythm of the language of recollection, so that the "then and there" becomes the here and now. Among William Mayne's many gifts is a facility for making memories for those too young to have them, so that his readers go back over experiences they never had…. The reader learns the rhythm of the narrative from William Mayne's delicate pacing. Familiar dialect conversation centres on immediate events, while the b...

Mr. Mayne's settings are most often Yorkshire villages, his characters ordinary middle-class people—except that they are never really ordinary. To browse through a number of his books at the same time is to realize how many people he has brought to life in print and how complete an individual each one is. The children disagree, sometimes quarrel and weep, but the atmosphere that one remembers in his many stories is good humor. The relationships are affectionate and amusing, the dialogue full o...

The background [of "Sand"] is perfect for a suspense story: an old English town by the North Sea where the sand drifts in relentlessly, burying houses and trees beneath great dunes…. Under the constant shifting of scene, each happening tends to become anticlimactic. And it is too bad that against this brooding backdrop, the characters, like footprints in the drifting sand, leave no lasting impression. (p. 46) Alberta Eiseman, in The New York Times Book Review (© 1965...

With [Royal Harry], the adult reader finds his attention gripped with the same intensity as that of any child. This is an ideal situation for a genuine sharing of its experience. What are the qualities of the book that contribute to its peculiarly universal character? The magical appeal of the core of the tale demonstrates ancient fealties and gives us hints of treasure to be discovered and a throne to be regained. The reader is refreshed by his journey deeper into the past and closer into the wild countrys...

At first, a William Mayne story always sounds to me as if it had been translated from some other tongue by someone with a rather thin gift for languages. The structures are awkward, and sometimes passages have to be paraphrased to reveal their meaning. But after a few pages, the reader grows accustomed to all this and forgets it, because Mayne's style has a strength all its own and the strength takes over. This story [of "A Year and a Day"], unlike some others of his, is a gentle, uncom...

William Mayne has devised a kind of dialogue in which the character speaks principally to himself, to clarify some facet of his personality for his own benefit. His children are surprisingly articulate but leave much unsaid. The possibilities for ambiguity, for private interpretation, are endless here, but the device is used also to project unequivocal feelings and uncertainties…. In Earthfasts … the author's concern with psychological effect is everywhere apparent: he has got inside th...

The descriptive matter [in The Battlefield] is seemingly casual, compressed, beautifully telling. The dialogue is wayward without being rambling, and fascinating in the way the half-formed thoughts jut up like stepping stones. But I couldn't help thinking that too much of this was muted bravura, put on for the benefit of older faithful admirers, especially in the first 30 pages. I'm not one who believes that children's stories should be pared down to their narrative essentials, with eve...

First published in England in 1955, [A Swarm in May] has a most unusual plot. It is based on an old tradition: the youngest Singing Boy is always the Beekeeper; he must "come before the Bishop one Sunday in May, to sing a short solo and recite the ritual assuring the Bishop that the organist will supply good beeswax candles for the Cathedral throughout the coming year." The custom is still carried on though now the candles come from a warehouse and are not made of beeswax. How John Owen the yo...

In both [A Parcel of Trees and Sand] the author's brilliant story-telling, character drawing, dialogue and perfectly-timed climaxes evoke, as always, the highest admiration. The 'parcel of trees' is the legal term for a disused orchard, Susan's favourite retreat. When her right to use it is threatened by the railway authorities whose property it apparently is, a friendly lawyer establishes her legal ownership by 'squatter's rights.' The ingenious way in which...

William Mayne, in A Game of Dark, has taken on not only the Oedipal conflict but the basic existential one of staying or going, holding on or splitting…. Appropriately the story opens with a feeling of sickness and a pervasive stench. The bad smell of Donald's life has carried over into a second life in which he must ultimately fight a stinking worm who leaves a slimy track behind him as he preys on a feudal village….

[Words and Music] is a sequel to the remarkable trilogy A Swarm in May, Choristers' Cake, and Cathedral Wednesday…. Has the magic been achieved yet again? No one is more conscious than William Mayne of the difficulty of maintaining the level of interest over a number of volumes and in Cathedral Wednesday he adopted the unusual and successful device of looking at the school through the eyes of a day-boy. Now we are back again as boarders and with the fabric of the cathedral playing a part in th...

William Mayne is a witty, highly individual writer, author of that very British, very special story, "A Swarm in May" and the tricky, imaginative "The Blue Boat." ["Underground Alley"] is possibly the most accessible for the average American reader that we have yet had here. The setting is a Welsh border town where the townspeople are preparing for the annual Town Day and the visit of a prince. The rather complicated action revolves around the discovery by Patty, a ...

The inner weather of a Mayne novel is as shifting as a spring day and inspires an expressive response rather than a report. As usual [in Ravensgill] the plot offers little more than the bare lines of a contrapuntal theme; two farming households, two grandmothers, children and two hired men are linked and separated by a murder mystery and the Yorkshire dales. As the details emerge, so does the pattern of time, place and relationships change, shifting like the elemental landscape features under the influence ...

Once one has accepted the premise that is is possible to see backwards and forwards in time, and to conjure people from the past and the future, the logic of [Over the Hills and Far Away] is impeccable, and its unfolding inevitable. Particularly commendable is the portrayal of the children of both periods of history who are faced with situations which they do not understand. It is this portrayal of children exposed to the conflicts in the adult world which spells out Mayne's undeniable qualities as a...

[In A Game of Dark Mayne] again illustrates his technical mastery of plot and his skill in manipulating the elements of time-fantasy…. The whole story alternates between the reality of the unhappy events in the life of Donald living in an English town and the fantasy of a world in which he can slay a monster—ultimately a world which he can choose to enter or to reject. The two elements—denoting outer and inner experience, objective and subjective perceptiveness—are uncannily comb...

William Mayne's Ravensgill … has already been praised highly elsewhere; but that is no reason for not praising it again. It is, I feel, his most considerable book for some time. In addition to the usual brilliance of his writing, there is a chilling depth that lends the story a rare excitement. Little by little a long-forgotten crime is brought to the surface—both literally and metaphorically—and the weird grandmother who stands at the plot's centre becomes a shifting, fas...

It is almost becoming a cliché with reviewers to say that William Mayne's latest book is 'his most powerful to date,' but really one cannot avoid saying it of [A Game of Dark]. How he is able to go on giving us books which evoke ever higher and higher praise is nothing short of astounding…. The way the action slips from one world to the other and back again, and the subtle interaction between fantasy and reality, make the story totally absorbing. The dream world, although ...

[A Year and a Day] is a fairy tale which superbly evokes the potency of words and the wonder of natural things. The language is simple and fresh, reflecting the sisters' sensual and visual appreciation of the beauties around them and their dawning delight in words…. The tenderness of the peasant family towards the strange little boy, the essential kindness of the squire and the rector, the humour of small incidents, and the pungency of the Cornish dialogue, provide a warm and realistic backclo...

In A Parcel of Trees Mayne evokes a languid, summery world of long and lazy days and slow quest. He unfolds his story unhurriedly, drowsing and droning, so it seems. But the impression is deceptive—a retrospective impression. In fact, the story seldom stands still, and then only for the shortest passages. (p. 148) There is with Mayne a sense of a slow, deep, steady current of understanding underlying the lighter surface show. The surface carries the reader buoyantly; the undercurrent it is which is r...

[The Hill Road is adequate] historical adventure cum fantasy…. This story is not fully realized as fantasy—perhaps because the picture of life in post-Roman Britain is developed rather casually; perhaps because Dolly and Andrew remain passive, unknowing, almost unthinking participants in their remarkable trip backward through time. Yet it is strengthened by the author's sense of English atmosphere and by his sharply contrasting characterizations of Magra and her stand-in. Fine for reade...

Confirming the impression made by Earthfasts, William Mayne shows again the broadening of his talents in [The Hill Road, an] artful fantasy of superimposed eras in time…. The atmosphere of moorland and valley is, as we would expect from this writer, exquisitely conveyed, with the underlying sense of slumbering history beautifully heightened by the almost tangible juxtaposition of the two depths of time in the same place. Especially convincing is the author's recreation of the details, customs ...

[William Mayne] is becoming the John Creasey of children's fiction…. [The Incline is] his best book in several years. Unfortunately, because it's all very English in its understated, clever dialogue and portrayal of a Yorkshire town at the turn of the century, with all its subtle class antagonisms, I suspect American children are likely to put it down in bewilderment, for all its virtues. In his resolute strangeness and obsession with certain themes, Mayne, like Ivan Southall, is much l...

The magical blending of times and spells in [Earthfasts] is made more effective by Mayne's matter-of-fact attitude. His tight, intricate plotting, skillful prose, and distinctive, individual characters, especially the drummer boy and gentle, passive Keith, combine with the immense profundity of his invention to make this one of the best of all fantasies, a classic of speculative literature. (p. 240) Diana Waggoner, in her The Hills of Faraway: A Guide to Fantasy (abridged by permission o...

[No] one merges past and present more seamlessly and masterfully than William Mayne. In some of his settings, the past is embodied in relics and monuments which litter the landscape, it incarnates itself in optical effects of light, it spills out of the cracks in the sky, it moves restively under the soil, it maintains a kind of urgent pressure on the present day. (p. 440) Jane Langton, in The Horn Book Magazine (copyright © 1973 by The Horn Book, Inc., Boston), October, 1973.

You either surrender to Mayne's spell or impatiently don't. Myself, I admire so many of his talents singly—his poet's eye and ear, his word-magic, his evocation of atmosphere—but I cannot make the surrender, and feel sure that at no age could I have done so. (p. 708) Geoffrey Trease, in New Statesman (© 1966 The Statesman & Nation Publishing Co. Ltd.), November 11, 1966.