The Bloxworth Blue

by William Corlett

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060213442
• ISBN13: 9780060213442
• Release Date: January 1984
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 186 Pages
• Age Range: 12 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 7 and higher

Customer Reviews

Bloxworth Blue is More Than a Butterfly

William Corlett is now perhaps best known for his children's fantasy quartet "The Magician's House", which starts with "The Steps Up the Chimney" -- a mixture of Susan Cooper's "The Dark is Rising", Kenneth Grahame's "The Wind in the Willows", and John Masefield's "The Midnight Folk" -- a story where modern children who move to an ancient country house find themselves caught up with the animals of the surrounding countryside, and the living spirit of a Middle-Ages magician who is battling evil forces. Strong stuff.If Corlett had written nothing else after his first three books he would have been a children's writer to reckon with -- a Young Adult writer of great power, working before the term "Young Adult" gad been invented. Perhaps the fact that this trilogy, or triptych, starting with "The Gate of Eden", concerns a teenager at the end of his Secondary schooling, and then the same person as a man in his twenties, and then as an old man in a futuristic England rife with social collapse, explains why the three books have been neglected. Yet the middle book "The Land Beyond" is extremely powerful: a modern-day story with a time-slip or time-blend with Ancient Delphi and the famous Charioteer -- a story where the ancient god Apollo is recognised by a modern sceptic as a great force of life. And the first of the three is a powerful exploration of the relationship between the central young man, an old and rather dubious English Literature teacher, and the young man's girlfriend. Subtly told, and moving, with hints of poetry, much play with language, and post-modernist narrative devices, all used decades before post-modernism was thought of."Bloxworth Blue" is less experimental, perhaps reminiscent of William Mayne or Robert Cormier or Robert Westall when they write strong stories about families in crisis. As with other Corlett books, haunted by forces from the past, legendary imps (mini-demons) that were a curse on medieval Lincoln cathedral, and were turned into gargoyles, come to life in the Twentieth century. They are released, to wreak their own kind of havoc, when a family visits the cathedral, each member carrying a burden, a secret, an urgent need. An elderly uncle, the marriage difficulties of the mother, the first sexual encounter of the teenage daughter, the son's exploration of the cathedral and discovery of his uncle's bitter secret -- these narrative threads weave together, with glimpses of the larger outside world, including a rare blue butterfly, the Bloxworth Blue.Corlett is always a strong writer, seeking new territory, striving for the precise image, the words that express extreme feeling, the tension that conceals ideas that can only be inferred. As with "The Secret Line", a story of teenage breakdown, and the healing bond s that develop between young person and old person, "Bloxworth Blue" repays careful reading.Well worth finding -- like a rare butterfly, or a suddenly discovered stone face