To distil the message from Alan Garner's quartet of books which, so far, includes The Stone Book, Tom Fobble's Day, and now, Granny Reardun, the reader has to locate himself in the landscape at a point in time. Chronologically Granny Reardun comes before Tom Fobble's Day, but each, in Alan Garner's terms, is its own onion of craft, time, place and family. Time is caught in stone walls and steeples made by Joseph's grandfather, so that when Joseph at the beginning of Granny Reardun lies on a hill and watches a family moving out of its house, which later provides stone for his grandfather to finish a wall, history turns. Joseph's decision to be a smith ushers in a new era.

The synchronic layers and surfaces of Alan Garner's telling defy linear description by their very transparency. By reading the text aloud one catches the movement in time...