#bookreview: Brunt Boggart: A Tapestry of Tales | David Greygoose

Brunt Boggart: A Tapestry of Tales by David Greygoose
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Brunt Boggart: A Tapestry of Tales is a collection of brand new folk tales. From the (imaginary) village of Brunt Boggart to the (equally imaginary) town of Arleccra, Greygoose brings you down the Peddlar Man’s track, one that twists and turns, slithers and jumps through space and time. It’s an ambitious undertaking.

And it starts off well. I fall into this quaint English village with whispered superstitions, chanted verses, and secret songs. I am enchanted by the Wolfboy who gives up the woods to become Greychild, all the while harbouring in his heart a secret quest to find his lost mother. There’s so much to discover about Brunt Boggart, about Ravenhair and her grandmother’s black ribbon; Crossdogs who is the best fighter, the Wolf Slayer, but also has the kindest heart; the Peddlar Man who trades ribbons and dolls and shiny things. It’s almost real, encased in a kind of shimmery surreality. There’s a lilt to the words, a purposeful rustic garbling that’s almost authentic, but not quite. At times, I can almost hear the rhythm and the beat, can almost be absorbed into the lyricism of the story. But then some wildly outlandish thing happens and I am dragged out again, wondering, what’s going on here?

It’s a tapestry, alright. There’s no one story, but many, thrown together haphazardly with many loose ends that just disappear. There seems to be a larger narrative arc that follows Greychild and smaller arcs following Crossdog and Ravenhair, but it’s all jumbled up and jumps around way too much for me to get a proper grip on. There’s also the impossibility of it all. Whilst folk and fairy tales have their fair measure of magic and bizarre happenings, there’s usually something that pulls them together and gives the story a cohesiveness that makes it believable, magical even. In Brunt Boggart, it just stays bizarre and confusing; I’m often left wondering if the events in the story were meant to be real, or a dream, or a fever dream, or a… what?

All told, this book is meant for reading aloud, to let its repetitions and rhythms bring you to another world… where you don’t have to think about plot and what the heck is actually going on.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from Pushkin Children's Books via Edelweiss. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

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