Monday 30 June 2014

The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains

The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains by Neil Gaiman
Published by Headline
17th June 2014
Hardback Edition

 

  

You ask me if I can forgive myself?  I can forgive myself for many things.  For where I left him.  For what I did.

And so begins The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains, a haunting story of family, the other world, and a search for hidden treasure. 

 
Neil Gaiman has done it yet again, and written something that is like no other.  The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains was first published in All New Tales in 2010.  This new version, fully illustrated in colour, by Eddie Campbell is the first time it has been published as a stand-alone story.

This is not a long book, just 74 pages in total but that doesn't mean that you don't get a full and thought-provoking story because you do.  It tells the tale of a man, a small man, but a man no-less and his search for gold on the Misty Isle.  He bids Calum MacInnes, a man who has been to the isle before, to be his guide in his quest.

As the book unravels, we learn both more of the narrator and his companion and of how their paths are intrinsically linked by an earlier fate.  As with many tales, what goes around, comes around and the balance of karma is restored at the end of the story.

I love Scotland, and I love the Isle of Skye, where my ancestors landed as Vikings many centuries ago.  This is not a fairy tale for children by any means but a book for grown-ups; a tale of travel and darkness with pictures of all kinds.  On the 4th and 5th July, Neil Gaiman will read this story to two audiences at the Barbican and Usher Hall, accompanied by the illustrations from the text, and a new underscore by the FourPlay String Quartet.  I envy those audiences the performance that will befall them.

 
Happy Reading

 
Miss Chapter x

1 comment:

  1. Loved it when I 1st read it, loved it even more in this new format.

    ReplyDelete

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