"Red Shift" by Alan Garner

Three young men, from three different time periods:

• Macey, fighting through Cheshire with the Roman Ninth Legion.
• Thomas, trying to protect his wife from Irish soldiers during the English Civil War/ War of Three Kingdoms in the 1640s.
• Tom, an intelligent teenager perpetually showing off his knowledge of facts and quotations and making silly puns, living in a caravan near Sandbach with his mum and dad and trying to maintain a long distance relationship with Jan. 

They are connected through the colours blue and silver, a tower on Mow Cop, the stars of Orion and an ancient stone hand-axe.

The stories all involve the relationship between the man and a woman. The women can bear children, they are the nurturers and protectors, although they may be damaged and wounded and hurt and abused. It seems the men are singled out for some special lunacy, being subject to fits of madness of one kind or another. The stories in the past are overtly violent: no one is far from the threat of violent death. Modern Tom's father and grandfather were soldiers (Jan's are health professionals) but there is no war in the modern setting; despite this the Tom and Jan story has incredible poignancy.

It isn't an easy read. Much is carried in short sentence dialogue, often without speaker-tags so the reader sometimes has to reconstruct who is speaking. Spoiler alert: The stories are not well-resolved and each is left a little open as to what exactly happens. It is not made clear whether Jan and Tom eventually have sex; there are gaps in between lines of dialogue by the same person that indicate lacunae but it isn't clear of what length; the characters say things that might be taken as suggesting that they have had sex. But it is all very enigmatic.The ending of the Jan and Tom story carries an implication that they do not meet again (their regular parting words are 'Hello' but on this case it is 'see you' and the final line 'It doesn't matter. Not really now not any more.' sound like a break up. The very last page, after this last line, is a letter written in the 'Lewis Carroll' cipher which Tom and Jan use for their correspondence. No code word is given which makes the cipher hard to break but wikipedia (here) offers a code word and a translation of a letter from Tom to Jan. 

Some great moments:

• "They returned to the gloom and announcements and people, trains drawing hands apart." (p 60)
• "Spiders under my skin." (p 62)
• "Services aren't what they were now that we understand them." (p 66)
• "not really now not any more." (p 108)

Poignant. Enigmatic. Hard to decipher. 

October 2020; 190 pages

Garner is author of a number of novels, mostly aimed at children, in which ancient legends and magical worlds impact upon everyday life:

• The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, its sequel The Moon of Gomrath, and the distinctively different concluding part to the 'trilogy', Boneland.
• Elidor, a Narnia-style children's fantasy
• The utterly brilliant Owl Service (aimed at young adults)
• Red Shift, also aimed at young adults and perhaps the darkest of Garner's novels. A line in Elidor - "The legend says that there was once a ploughboy in Elidor: an idiot, given to fits. But in his fit he spoke clearly, and was thought to prophesy." (C 6) - seems to be a link with one of the characters in Red Shift. There are alos several links between Red Shift and Boneland.
• The definitively adult Thursbitch
• Treacle Walker, perhaps Garner's late masterpiece

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God