Talk:City of Gold (book)

"is or was a radical retelling"
With reference to CILIP's retrospective online (likely 2007–2012) citation of this book for the 1980 Carnegie Medal in Literature, I wrote yesterday:
 * (quote) City of Gold is or was a "radical" retelling of Bible stories, according to the retrospective online Carnegie Medal citation.

Robina Fox has removed "or was" - it either is or isn't, as it hasn't changed (quoting the edit summary.

What is radical in retelling Bible stories may have changed a lot since 1980; probably it has. It isn't clear to me whether CILIP has utilized any contemporary sources --such as 1980 newspaper coverage of the Medal or archives of the ancestral Library Association-- in fashioning its online "Living Archive" pages. It isn't clear to me whether CILIP uses the present tense ordinarily or tenselessly in saying (2007?) that the book "offers a radicall retelling". --P64 (talk) 16:08, 21 July 2012 (UTC)
 * I think we have here a misunderstanding of the expression "radical retelling". In this context it means that the stories were taken back to their bare roots (radix meaning root) and built up from there. It has to do with telling the stories in a fresh and unusual way, not with any expression of the latest "radical" ideas. From reviews on Amazon (not quotable sources, but at least they have read the book, which I haven't), it seems that each of the stories is told from a different character's point of view. That is surely an undeniably radical approach. There may have been subsequent radical Bible retellings (for example, from the perspective of a time traveller, or in the form of newspaper reports), but they would not be any more radical than this, just radical in a different way. Robina Fox (talk) 02:31, 22 July 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Someone who knows the book may be able to infer whether the quoted second sentence of the CILIP citation is an explanation of how the retelling is and was radical. Someone may be able to do better who reads one of these Sources:a contemporary review, or newspaper coverage of the 1980 Medals, or the Carnegie Medals book underused by a previous editor (now ref#3). --P64 (talk) 16:33, 22 July 2012 (UTC)