Red Shift - Thank you Wikipedia, Or not.

[SolidGoldBrass]

Maddening wierd dodgy book. For 15 years I wondered exactly what the annoying coded pages at the end said, and finally found out. And it was just as incomprehensible as the rest of the bloody thing.
Alan Garner is one of those interesting kids writers who wouldn;t get away wih his stuff AT ALL these days as it's basically all about sex and class, but Red Shift is still one long wank of a book...

I haven't read that for a long time, but I remember being disappointed by it as a child. I did enjoy some of his other stuff - I wonder if it has aged well. Some books I enjoyed as a kid and have re read and thought that they were really a bit iffy.

Yes, some kids books don't age well at all, others kind of get better the older you get.

Red Shift is not wank, though it appears so complicated it's not worth bothering, even for adults. I suggest you have a read of Charles Butler's essay on Red Shift and the Tam Lin story - alangarner.atspace.org/tl.html. Or this more encyclopaedic explanation here - www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Red_Shift_(novel)#encyclopedia

There are YA writers writing about sex and class right now but Red Shift is so elliptical, I suspect it would be hard read for most teens today (as it was even then in 1973). But although dense, it is rather astounding as well as creepy and disturbing as a book. I love it.