Red Shift (novel)

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Template:Tone Red Shift, by Alan Garner (1973), is a complex novel for teenagers and adults set in three intertwined time periods (Roman Britain, the siege of Barthomley Church, and a caravan site near the M6), spanning over a thousand years but one geographical area: south Cheshire, England. Garner evokes the essence of place, allowing his characters to echo each other through time, as if their destinies may be predefined by the soil on which they walk. These are themes explored more tangibly in his easier, earlier work The Owl Service, but brought here to maturity in a weave of rapid, impressionistic dialogue.

The three stories resonate with one another - as well as the same setting, the landscape changing over time, they each revolve around a relationship between a young man and young woman. And how this relationship is taken to the breaking-point by the circumstances they find themselves in and by their own turmoil of fractured self-identity. They don't understand themselves. They don't understand the times they're living in. They're trying to. The world is moving on. As the unfolding of the stories progresses, it seems that the lives of the characters caught in the stories is more dislocated and alienated as the stories move through historical time. Perhaps this is the "Red Shift" - things and people moving away from each other more quickly as historical time marches on. But there's also another loop - time isn't linear, There's something that anchors stories to a particular place, and the story will play out, regardless of the protagonists.

The three stories are all depressing and bleak. But there's a sense that the characters are finding connections to something mythic, beyond the mundane. But they don't understand what it is. The earlier characters seem to have more of a clue. These connections are impled through the structure of the storytelling, and by a couple of story devices (the axe-head and red garment appearing in each story. And the characters' names and predispositions).

In terms of reading the book, Alan Garner takes the "show, don't tell" method to extremes. It's a book that intrigues on first reading. Its emotional subtleties become clearer on repeated readings. When you get to the stage where you're decoding Jan's letter to Tom, reproduced in code inside the covers of the book, you know this book has got to you!