Robert Holdstock (1948–2009)

I read [b:Mythago Wood|126192|Mythago Wood (Mythago Wood, #1)|Robert Holdstock|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1308639607l/126192._SY75_.jpg|121534] back when it was first published, and I loved it. I have read it several times and have always wished it could be turned into a move. The Hollowing is a much better tale than the middle book, [b:Lavondyss|280716|Lavondyss (Mythago Wood, #2)|Robert Holdstock|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1389643000l/280716._SY75_.jpg|1839828], which I considered to be a vast disappointment.
But when all is said and done, I love the idea of Holdstock's myth-haunted Ryhope Wood more than I love his stories. The Hollowing is a bit of a hot mess, alternating jerkily between well-crafted scenes and jumbled Jung-influenced images flung at you with what almost feels like hostility. Perhaps a strong-handed editor or agent could have guided Holdstock to a stronger narrative. But we will never know.… (more)

Glancing at a few reviews before reading this I could see that this was one of those books that was polarizing - some people love it, many people don't. I had nibbled on this many years ago but never got going. Gave the book away after it sat on my shelf a long time. Always felt a little guilty about not tackling what I thought was a classic of '80s fantasy. It won the World Fantasy award in 1985. I saw a nice copy recently and picked it up. Started reading it and liked the premise, even if everything is more than a little murky. Large bits of this are incomprehensible mixed with stuff one can understand and be drawn into. Maybe one needs to be more knowledgeable of myths beyond Arthur and Robin Hood to have an appreciation for what is going on in the book. I like the idea of this small ancient forest that has survived since the last ice age but all the strange mental myth creation or whatever it is was just weird.

Read some of the reviews if you are curious. I have a hard time trying to describe this but overall I am glad I read it, but couldn't quite enjoy the strangeness of it all.… (more)

Mixed feelings about this one. The first section is one of the most atmospheric dark fantasies I've had the pleasure of reading. The slow progression of horror, of being simultaneously engulfed by a malevolent wood and by the legacy of a parent, is genuinely haunting.

The rest of the novel was inventive, but exchanges much of the psychological horror for a more linear adventure narrative. There's an interesting character study embedded here - Stephen is Guiwenneth; she is his href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anima_and_animus" rel="nofollow" target="_top">anima. Likewise, the monsters that populate Ryhope Wood are aspects of a man whose childhood and war experience have left him deeply scarred. But Stephen never fully acknowledges the parallels between the wood's landscape and his internal landscape; till the end he views the mythagos as creatures to conquer or possess rather than externalized aspects of his psyche. If his lack of self-awareness was meant to be an indictment of the character, it was too subtle to register with this reader.

Nevertheless, Ryhope Wood was quite a setting. I don't think I've read another work that fully captured the experience of stumbling upon a ruin in the woods and feeling as if you've been transported into the past, or into a dream. The Celtic and pre-Celtic elements are robust, although the fixation with "folklore as historical record" felt dated, and the whole "racial memory" thing is cringeworthy, if on brand for a 1940s setting.

On the whole an imperfect novel, but certainly succeeds as a work of imagination.… (more)

An interesting premise and a powerfully written novel drawing on the author's theme of other realities used elsewhere in his 'Mythago Wood' series. Here, the treatment is dark and concerns a haunting of a strange kind. Michael is adopted by parents who seem rather self-absorbed and cannot relate to him as he grows, possibly due to traumatic events occurring around him in the first days after they take him home from the clinic which has made a somewhat dubious arrangement. Inexplicably, dirt is thrown at him whenever he is left alone, and this climaxes in the first section of the book in near disaster. After relocating to a friends' house, things settle for a few years but eventually the adults realise Michael can 'fetch' things, and they eventually understand that these things are taken from the distant past.

The gift turns out to be a kind of curse. Despite the fact that tragedy attends it - that the fetching is a violent wrenching and often includes body parts of humans and animals - the parents start to look on their adopted son as a goldmine. Meanwhile, they transfer their parental affection to their own natural born daughter. Michael is a lonely boy, bullied at school, whose only 'friend' is an alter ego, Chalk Boy, whom he believes to be essential to his ability to fetch valuable items from the past. Chalk Boy is a fetch of another kind - a Trickster character in effect, from the old meaning of trick. He often torments Michael by switching things at the last moment so that what he brings back are rotting animals etc.

As years pass, the boy develops an obsession with the Grail which he believes he can find and recover - perhaps to win back his father's affection which is soon lost when his gift becomes less certain as he approaches puberty, and his father turns to drink.

There is some good character development though I found the father's transformation from an unpleasant drunken sott who landed the family in debt to a dubious and violent group of characters, into an abruptly reawakened repentent man who wants to rebuild his fractured relationship with Michael, less than convincing. The psychic French character Francoise is also rather a plot device. But Michael and his little sister Carol are well realised. The only aspect that becomes a bit repetitious after a while are the graphic descriptions of the aftermath of violent dismemberment which attend Michael's forays into the past. Also, the explanation for what lies behind his psychic abilities and experience is a little 'pat' for me. Hence I'm rating this as 4 stars rather than 5.… (more)