![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Sep. 28th, 2005
Lost Books
Sep. 28th, 2005 04:57 pmInspired by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
selenya's reference to The Girl Who Owned a City I decided to post an obscure older kid lit recommendation: Michael de Larrabeiti's The Borribles. As a kid, this was one of my favorite books: I loved the fact the fact that it didn't cater to an adult's notion of what children "should" read, and I was captivated by its use of the "fantasy quest" in an unmagical, urban setting. The writing level wasn't very sophisticated - it's very much "written for children" in terms of its style and characterization. But as for content - yeesh. Oh yeah, and the ending scarred me for life.
When I discovered the third part of the trilogy was going to be published it became the first book I ever ordered (I was about 12 at the time). I was crushed when the publisher canceled its printing, citing the opposition of parental groups who were agitating for a ban on the series. For years the series was out of print and difficult to find, so I tracked down every copy I could and began to collect them; a generous internet contact eventually sent me a copy of the banned third book (which sucked, unfortunately).
Anyway, I was all set to recommend this as an obscure, out-of-print title, when I discovered that it's being reprinted! As a complete trilogy, no less! Thanks be to Harry Potter and to publishers who don't bother to keep track of old controversies!
And to prove I'm not the only one who remembers it fondly:
"In terms of being influenced by London, I'm at least as influenced by the literary distillation of London as by the real physical city. There are other London writers too whose infatuation with the city influences me -- Arthur Machen, Michael de Larrabeiti's Borribles trilogy, Two Fingers and James T. Kirk's (sic) Junglist, a great, underrated book. It's not just Gothic, but a more general hallucinatory, intense depiction (which includes Gothic)." -- China Mieville, 2002
selenya's reference to The Girl Who Owned a City I decided to post an obscure older kid lit recommendation: Michael de Larrabeiti's The Borribles. As a kid, this was one of my favorite books: I loved the fact the fact that it didn't cater to an adult's notion of what children "should" read, and I was captivated by its use of the "fantasy quest" in an unmagical, urban setting. The writing level wasn't very sophisticated - it's very much "written for children" in terms of its style and characterization. But as for content - yeesh. Oh yeah, and the ending scarred me for life. When I discovered the third part of the trilogy was going to be published it became the first book I ever ordered (I was about 12 at the time). I was crushed when the publisher canceled its printing, citing the opposition of parental groups who were agitating for a ban on the series. For years the series was out of print and difficult to find, so I tracked down every copy I could and began to collect them; a generous internet contact eventually sent me a copy of the banned third book (which sucked, unfortunately).
Anyway, I was all set to recommend this as an obscure, out-of-print title, when I discovered that it's being reprinted! As a complete trilogy, no less! Thanks be to Harry Potter and to publishers who don't bother to keep track of old controversies!
And to prove I'm not the only one who remembers it fondly:
"In terms of being influenced by London, I'm at least as influenced by the literary distillation of London as by the real physical city. There are other London writers too whose infatuation with the city influences me -- Arthur Machen, Michael de Larrabeiti's Borribles trilogy, Two Fingers and James T. Kirk's (sic) Junglist, a great, underrated book. It's not just Gothic, but a more general hallucinatory, intense depiction (which includes Gothic)." -- China Mieville, 2002