A Harp of Fishbones

In my youth I met a grand total of two authors -- but what a pair. One was the legendary Alan Garner (a select group of English students were driven into the city to attend a talk at the Little Bookroom, and my friend actually asked him a question (I was too shy); and the other was Joan Aiken, also at the Little Bookroom. I still treasure my signed copy of The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, which was one of the top ten formative books of my childhood. But even before I discovered Willoughby Chase, I had adored her short stories, especially the collections All You Ever Wanted and More Than You Asked For, which I borrowed repeatedly from the Mt Hagen library.

A Harp of Fishbones is another collection of short stories -- patchy, as collections are apt to be, but there are some gems here. My favourite tale was 'Mrs Nutti's Fireplace', which features repeat characters the Armitage family, a transposed room which overlooks a mysterious city, and a griffin's egg! How strange that you can go years without reading about a single griffin's egg, and then two books come along at once that revolve around them (see The Pinhoe Egg).

Most of these stories have a fairytale quality. 'Humblepuppy' stars a sweet, invisible ghost puppy (yes please) and 'The Dark Streets of Kimball's Green' is quite eerie. None of these stories quite matches my all-time favourite, 'A Room Full of Leaves', which elevates the idea of a family tree into a new dimension -- and is no relation to Kate Grenville's novel. I'm not sure I'll ever succeed in collecting all Joan Aiken's work, she was extremely prolific, but I'm happy to add A Harp of Fishbones to my shelves.