Charles Butler (1) (1963–)

As the title suggests, this book looks at the works of four British children’s fantasy authors: Penelope Lively, Alan Garner, Diana Wynne Jones and Susan Cooper. These writers contributed to the ‘second Golden Age’ of children’s literature in Britain during the 1960s and 1970s.

Obviously there were other British children’s authors writing during this period (such as Joan Aiken) who are not covered in this book so why has Butler chosen these four? The first section of this book looks at the biographic similarities between the four authors (all four were children during WWII and all attended Oxford University in the early 1950s when C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were lecturers there). Butler explores the influence Lewis and Tolkien may have had on these four authors and then continues to look at other influences from the war and the culture in Britain itself. I found it particularly interesting to see the importance these authors placed in the land itself compared to the urban fantasies of Neil Gaiman and other later writers.

I think the more books you’ve read by these four authors, the more you will appreciate this book, but it’s still a very enjoyable read even if you haven’t read the complete works although it may well mean that you end up adding a large number of books to your TBR pile!

I found the majority of this book readable and accessible for someone who has not read much literary criticism before. The last chapter (Conclusion: Writing for Children?) referred to other studies of the four authors and children’s literature in general and I found a lot of this discussion rather dry.… (more)

At times, I've tried to identify what I think of as a very English style in prose for children and young adults. It's certainly not ubiquitous (it's absent in books I think of as very English, from Noel Streatfield to Julie Bertagna). But it's also a writing style which I see in many English children's books, and have never seen in other English-language prose for children.

Reading Butler's _Death of a Ghost_, I think I have finally pinned it down. It's what I want to call the Alan Garner style of writing, and Butler is a master of it. Of course, this book is Garneresque in subject matter as well as prose style; I'm tempted to call it _The Owl Service_ meets Diana Wynne Jones' _Time of the Ghost_.

As in Garner's works, _Death of a Ghost_ doesn't follow the usual narrative track for children's literature. If there's a coming-of-age, it's the most unusual one of ever seen. There's a full circle return to home, but it certainly isn't a comfortable or safe one. If there's a journey into the matters of adulthood than it is a primal adulthood, perhaps more comfortable to an adherent of Bettelheim into a contemporary reader of children's fiction. And if there's hope, it's a very unusual kind.

If it's not clear that this is praise, then let me be explicit: this very unusual book is one of the best children's horror stories I've read. Anthony Horowitz fans might prefer a little more gore, but the story is a lot more terrifying.… (more)