Have You Read Any John Gordon?

[Milena]

Hi. I'm not sure I know enough to start a thread myself, but have you read any John Gordon? It may be he is covered elsewhere in the site and I missed it…

His first published novel was, I believe, The Giant Under the Snow, published by Hutchinson in the UK in 1968. I have a reprinted Puffin copy, from1971, under the editorship of the wonderful Kaye Webb.

It follows three teenagers through a fantasy adventure, rooted very much in the modern (1960's!) world, and has some extremely creepy bad guys, 'the leather men' - stick thin and desiccated, eyeless yet able to pursue the main characters through the winter woods, and servants to an ancient returning warlord.

If a reader likes The Dark is Rising sequence, then I would recommend this, as well as his diverse and eclectic list; The Midwinter Watch, The Grasshopper. His young characters are generally slightly unusual, intelligent and humorous. He also writes in ghost and horror genres for YA.

Any fans out there?

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Re: Great Y A Authors From Chronicles Network Readers

It sounds great. From your description, I'm tempted to look and see if it's available over here.

 

[Alia]

Milena, No, I haven't read any John Gordon. I did however take the liberty of making this post a thread so others who have read his work can comment as well.

 

[High Eight]

John Gordon is the best writer of ghost stories since M R James.

His novel The House on the Brink terrified me when I was younger. Recently, in cynical middle age, I read it again. And it still terrified me! (It didn't help that I was living near the north Kent marshes at the time and the story involves a something that crawls out of a marsh and goes hunting.......). I would recommend anything with his name on it.

 

[Milena]

Isn't is great when a book you re-read turns out to be just as good as you remember? Thanks for mentioning this one; I had put together a rough bibliography (below) and read many of his ghost stories, but not that one. I shall seek it out - especially as I collect ghost stories as well as science fiction..



Novels:
The Edge of the World (Fontana Lions, 1985)
The Ghost on the Hill (Kestrel, 1976; Peacock/Puffin, 1977)
The Giant Under the Snow (Hutchinson, 1968; Puffin, 1971)
Gilray's Ghost (Walker, 1995)
The House on the Brink (Hutchinson, 1970; Peacock/Puffin, 1972)
Short Stories and Collections:
The Burning Baby and Other Ghosts (Walker, 1992)
Catch Your Death and Other Ghost Stories (Patrick Hardy, 1984; Magnet, 1985)
"Kroger's Choice" in Ghost Stories, ed. Deborah Shine (Octopus, 1980)
The Spitfire Grave and Other Stories (Kestrel, 1979)
The Flesh Eater, The Grasshopper, The Waterfall Box , The Ghosts of Blacklode, The Midwinter Watch. All execpt The Grasshopper published by walker Books UK

 

[High Eight]

Isn't is great when a book you re-read turns out to be just as good as you remember?

It sure is - and it happens less and less as I get older. Or maybe I'm just getting more cynical

Thanks for mentioning this one; I had put together a rough bibliography (below) and read many of his ghost stories, but not that one. I shall seek it out - especially as I collect ghost stories as well as science fiction..



Novels:
The Edge of the World (Fontana Lions, 1985)
The Ghost on the Hill (Kestrel, 1976; Peacock/Puffin, 1977)
The Giant Under the Snow (Hutchinson, 1968; Puffin, 1971)
Gilray's Ghost (Walker, 1995)
The House on the Brink (Hutchinson, 1970; Peacock/Puffin, 1972)
Short Stories and Collections:
The Burning Baby and Other Ghosts (Walker, 1992)
Catch Your Death and Other Ghost Stories (Patrick Hardy, 1984; Magnet, 1985)
"Kroger's Choice" in Ghost Stories, ed. Deborah Shine (Octopus, 1980)
The Spitfire Grave and Other Stories (Kestrel, 1979)
The Flesh Eater, The Grasshopper, The Waterfall Box , The Ghosts of Blacklode, The Midwinter Watch. All execpt The Grasshopper published by walker Books UK

I've just bought a rather expensive limited edition of most of his ghost stories entitled 'Left in the Dark' (review here: Left in the Dark: The Supernatural Tales of John Gordon - an infinity plus review) - I've read a couple and it promises to be a fine collection.

 

[JGF]

I've been reading and collecting John Gordon's books since about 1993, and I think he's a very special author, both as a children's writer and as a writer of ghost stories. I find it eternally frustrating that so few of his books are ever in print these days - I've spent many years trying to collect all of his books by tracking them down second-hand!

His works like The Giant Under The Snow and The Edge of the World are nominally traditional for the genre of children's fantasy, but on closer inspection they have a genuinely unsettling tone that is dark and strange... The Giant Under The Snow contains the conventional ingredients of children meeting witches and warlords and finding buried treasure... but it also contains an unbelievably eerie sequence set in misty December woodland as the children are pursued by withered brown figures...

The Edge Of The World is the book that first got me interested in John Gordon, again because it combines the familiar with the very strange - in this story there are monstrous spidery figures with horse-skulls for heads. How many children's fantasies can boast that?

As somebody else has said, there is a big streak of M.R. James in Gordon's writing. Sometimes this seems accidental, as in the case of The House On The Brink, but at others it seems absolutely deliberate. I loved 'The Flesh Eater', which is tremendously dark and lifts in large part from the plot of M.R. James 'Casting The Runes', to great effect.

Probably my favourite of Gordon's books is 'Gilray's Ghost' - which is really quite bold for its genre, dealing with dark and taboo subjects, the alien intensity of teenage passions, and with a streak of darkness thick enough to choke on. The characters may be children, but the story is as nightmarish as anything written for adults at that time...

And my most recent acquisition is 'Left In The Dark', the sublime US collection of Gordon's short stories. Exactly how the UK doesn't give this author the same recognition I don't know. But, I remember buying 'The Burning Baby', and being... fascinated... by the dark simplicity of the short stories it contained, and I realised what a master of the form John Gordon was. And yet, how many people know of him these days???