Why have I only just heard of Catherine Fisher? Why?! I can hardly bear to continue existing in a world which renders it impossible to so much as walk into a bookshop without stubbing your toe on a copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bored and yet allows you to get to the age of … well … I’m not going to own my age … allows you to get old without having read Catherine Fisher. Seriously. There must be a revolution. Right now.

Anybody vaguely keeping abreast of Ferretbrain may remember that I recently had what amounted to multiple orgasms over Catherine Fisher’s Incarceron. With due trepidation, lest our relationship be merely an explosive one-night stand, I embarked upon one of her earlier novels. Corbenic (for £0.01 on Amazon! It’s a travesty!) is a re-telling of the grail myth and you may roll your eyes and say “not again” but it’s a genuinely good one. It’s also blessedly short and standalone, so those of us worn down to a mere nub of our former selves by an excessive quantity of modern fantasy trilogies can heave a sigh of relief.

The protagonist (it’s hard to call him a hero), Cal, has grown up coping with his mother’s drinking and schizophrenic episodes and has finally left home to work for his Uncle’s accountancy firm. He falls asleep on the way to Chepstow and accidentally gets off at the wrong stop, finding himself at Corbenic station instead. Since there isn’t going to be another train until the morning, he decides to look for a phone to call his uncle, instead finding what he takes to be luxurious hotel called The Castle, where he is invited to spend the night for free. He partakes in a luxurious banquet and meets the owner of the castle, a man called Bron confined to a wheelchair who appears to be in great pain. Cal then has a strange vision of a bleeding spear and golden cup. Bron presses him to ask a question about it but Cal won’t admit that he’s seen the vision, and goes to bed. When he wakes up the next morning, the castle is nothing but a ruin and there’s a sword through the head the bed, a parting gift from Bron: “may it serve you as you served us.”

Cal makes his way to Chepstow and begins to work for his Uncle, trying to put the vision behind him and ignore the sword. The work is dull and his mother phones him repeatedly, begging him to come home again. One day, he tries to sell the sword at an antique shop but he is set upon by muggers and rescued by a bunch of historical re-enactment loons calling themselves “the company.” They’re led by a stern chap called Arthur, his foster brother, Kai, and a crazed Big Issue seller calling himself Merlin. Cal finds himself becoming more involved with the company but he has promised his mother he will go home and stay with her over Christmas. In the end, he can’t bring himself to do it and tells her he’ll be home for New Year instead. However, while he’s celebrating Christmas with the company, he learns that his mother has taken an overdose and died – whether it’s suicide never becomes clear. After the funeral, Cal goes on a quest to find Corbenic again to atone for his betrayal, hoping heal the wounded king and, perhaps, himself as well.

Needless to say, it’s pretty dark stuff but not in that annoying, self-conscious “and his eyes were nothing more than great, glassy orbs sprinkled with light from the stars they could not see” way but in the sense of being genuinely haunting. I’ve been thinking about it since I read it. Like Incarceron, it’s a surprisingly slim volume for its depth. Cal himself is a genuinely difficult protagonist; he’s easy to understand but it’s difficult to sympathise with him. He is filled with bitterness and resentment towards his mother, and the fact she deprived him of both the innocence and material security of childhood. As the book opens, he has left her, despite her dependence on him, in order to live with his Uncle, a man living the suburbanites dream (if there is such a thing) and establish a similar life for himself. It’s hard to warm up to a character who wants generic middle-class things and a job in an accountancy firm, and who rejects the promise of adventure inherent in a vision of the Grail. He does some pretty harsh things over the course of the book (he betrays a friend, for example) but can always see, coming from where he has, why he would want he wants and why he rejects what he rejects.

Corbenic works on several levels, as a nicely old-fashioned Alan Garner / Susan Cooper modern/mythic adventure, as a re-telling of the Grail myth, and also as an allegory about loss and acceptance. The boundaries between the Arthurian world and the real world as never firmly established, for example the re-enactors could be just a bunch of hippies or the reincarnation of Arthur and his knights in the present. Equally, Cal’s visions of the Grail could be visions of the Grail or they could be elements of schizophrenia inherited from his mother, or they could be the temporary symptoms of a nervous breakdown inspired by the guilt he feels at his mother’s death. Of course, it’s like Pan’s Labyrinth in that it doesn’t really matter whether Cal really finds the Grail – the story is emotionally satisfying precisely because of the ambiguity.

As I have said, Corbenic gets down with some really rather dark issues and, because of the ambiguity and Fisher’s lightness of touch, I had rather a hard time entangling them. I didn’t know how to respond to Cal abandoning his mother. I mean, I personally supported it – the woman, although pitiable, was clearly dragging him down into her already ruined life. But several characters try to convince Cal to go back, even if just for a visit, and her death is on some level inevitably linked with his broken promise to spend Christmas with her. The other thing we are meant to understand about Cal’s mother is that, no matter how ill-suited she was to the task of being one, she did truly love her son. Again, perhaps I’m being too harsh and missing the point but I say alcoholism trumps love. I know it’s not her fault per se but love is just a word and breaking your child is a pretty poor demonstration of it. Cal makes a lot of mistakes in Corbenic but they spring mainly from the fact he has led a terrible life and is utterly fucked up about it. Cal’s mothers love is a prison of guilt and responsibility for him: the fact he knows she loves him, and he loves her in return, stops him making a clean break. Had she just been hatefully abusive there would have been no ambivalence surrounding his flight from her.

Cal’s Uncle Trevor (who also abandoned Cal’s mother for his life of suburban luxury and stagnation) is initially who Cal aspires to be. However, the Uncle’s girlfriend warns Cal away from that kind of thinking because a long time ago “something died inside” Trevor. It’s never made explicit what has died or what caused it to die, but it seems plausible to assume that in breaking away from someone he loved, as Cal is doing, Trevor had to sacrifice some part of himself. I think perhaps what Corbenic explores, ultimately, is a lose/lose situation. Cal can neither stay with his mother nor abandon her, but with her death, she frees him from the impossible prison love and dependence has created. Cal’s final search for the Grail represents his struggle with his guilt and grief; the only healing it can offer is acceptance, but with acceptance comes the strength to continue. If there is a message to take from Corbenic it seems to be: love is not enough but it’s all we have.

Corbenic is not, as these thoughts might suggest, a deeply depressing book. It is beautifully written and atmospheric and genuinely profound. Its mysteries, like the Grail itself, must remain unknowable.