The Stone Book Quartet

A beautifully written elegy for a time long gone, The Stone Book Quartet features four interlinked stories, spanning more than a century, about one day in the life of four generations of Garner's family. These are stories of craftsmen, stone cutters, blacksmiths, passing on their knowledge and craft, the secrets of their trades. But they are also stories of change, of a vanishing way of life, of loss and progress.

Set in and around Chorley in Cheshire, where Garner's family has lived for generations, there is a pared down directness to the writing that means no word is wasted. No sentence is superfluous. Each short tale is moving in its own way, from the stone cutter showing his daughter the secret cave his family have visited for hundreds of years, to the blacksmith ending his time during the second world war surrounded by the shades of his forebears.

This is some of Garner's best writing, a book for everyone. Superb.