I've not read this and have no childhood recollections of it. But Robert Macfarlane the landscape and nature writer just tweeted it and it struck me as rather an unsettling cover for a book aimed at children. Somehow the puffin in the left top corner eyeing you sideways on, with a hint of smug, makes it more grotesque and baleful. Even the font looks malevolent.
The series of 5 books def worth a read, The Green Witch and The Grey King are my personal favorites.
ReplyDeleteBut the film is a disaster. Including Ian McShane and Christopher Eccleston in the film can not save it. It really is that bad.
http://www.empireonline.com/movies/dark-rising/review/
I also have no childhood memories of these books, but I nonetheless find myself owning 'The Dark is Rising' (in the edition pictured above) and several others, simply because the title / cover art / font combos are so striking and, as you say, so wonderfully sinister. Just superb illustration & design work.
ReplyDeleteI tried reading 'The Dark is Rising' once, but couldn't really get into it as an adult. Maybe I would have had more luck as a child?
(Also, I probably don't need to remind anyone that this book was the inspiration of the Mercury Rev song/album of the same name, for better or for worse.)
Check the text on the back of this one:
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Leon Garfield's writing is pretty dark if laced with grim wit. One specialty was ghost stories. His also wrote The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris which as satires go has a pretty mordant take on man's folly. I vividly remember the BBC television adaption version from 1979.
ReplyDeleteIn a s.f. and fantasy bookshop I came across a critical study of Garfield's work by Professor Roni Natov - one of the chapters had the Boards of Canada redolent title "Ghost Stories: The Presentness of the Past"
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