Richard Adams and William Horwood
Feb. 9th, 2007 05:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ghoti_mhic_uaitColin recently decribed William Horwood as an author of 'teenage fiction'. I could not, at first, understand this as a description, but as I thought, I began to come up with a theory. Richard Adams said that he wandted to write 'a proper grown-up novel for children'; this is Watership Down. Perhaps William Horwood has succeseded in writing children's stories for adults.
I think particularly of the Duncton trilogies, very similar in feel to the Mrs Frisby books, yet utterly mature, and obviously aimed at a mature audience; the Wolves of Time also feels similar.
Obviously, not all his books fit this description; Stonor Eagles, while a fabulous book, is a grown-up novel through and through. but for some, maybe.
What do you think?
I think particularly of the Duncton trilogies, very similar in feel to the Mrs Frisby books, yet utterly mature, and obviously aimed at a mature audience; the Wolves of Time also feels similar.
Obviously, not all his books fit this description; Stonor Eagles, while a fabulous book, is a grown-up novel through and through. but for some, maybe.
What do you think?
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-02-09 05:43 pm (UTC)Maybe you could see the Duncton books as "teenage" or "childrens" books because they don't become horribly self aware and embarressed when objectively they ought to. Anyone trying to be clever or mature would find it impossible to write fables of talking moles and good and evil and god.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-10 01:59 pm (UTC)I don't know why I think of Mrs Frisby (yes, that Mrs Frisby), exzcept that to me they feel similar.
In a way, I suppose I often think of fantasy books as fairy tales; but that's another issue.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-09 06:03 pm (UTC)and I think he did a continuation of wind in the
willows which I did not like. Maria Kamenkovich
Tolkien translator corresponded with him on the
spiritual background of the mole books and discovered
he is some sort of Buddhist...
but that is to the side... nothing against buddhism
really but dont care much for the horwood books I
have read.
Now Alan Garner's books would be an example of a man
who wrote wonderful books for children which adults
can enjoy "moon of gomrath" is my favorite...
but then he got ambitious (sort of like jim cary trying to
do serious parts?) and from red shift on his writing seems
to me to be not for children and to be trash...
have wandered off point, but perhaps even a tangential resposne
can have some interest.
+S
no subject
Date: 2007-02-10 02:03 pm (UTC)That's an interesting point about Alan Garner - I've only read the Weirdstone of Brisingamen, which always frightened me as a child, but I loved it anyway. Like Robert O'Brien's, 'the Silver Crown', which scared me so much I gave it away, and spent the next fifteen years wanting it back (until I eventually did get another copy).
Perhaps everything harks back to Robert O'Brien for me, maybe that's who I should be reading :) But I felt that 'Z for Zachariah' was trying too hard; much as you say about Alan Garner, I felt the more adult writing was trying too hard, and failing to be any good.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-09 06:13 pm (UTC)I have yet to read any animal-POV book that did not feel like human beings in poor disguise compared to Watership Down, though. What Adams does particularly with the scale of things, such that you really do feel how immense and difficult some of the innovative thoughts in it are to rabbits even though they would be trivial to any human, and with the rabbit folk tales all through the text and how that suddenly gets so much more punch in the one about the Black Rabbit, is just perfect.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-10 02:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-09 06:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-09 10:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-10 02:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-10 06:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-10 10:02 pm (UTC)