Talking with my wife earlier about how I believe the demarcation between children's, adolescent and adult novels was in my opinion a nebulous one, I had cause to refer to the book as an example, and had something of an epiphany that I think worth sharing. What I think, makes Graham's book so brilliant, such a work of high literature is not that the story can 'be read at different levels' by children and adults, with metaphor's and the like revealing themselves to adult audiences that are hidden from young readers. On the contrary, the work's true genius is in that it is exactly the same story that is read by adults and children alike, but that the emotional resonance that the writing is capable of producing does not 'plateau', but rather continues to increase into adulthood and indeed onward through life as experience furnishes one with the tools to mine it. The sheer power of the writing exhibited in The Piper at the Gates of Dawn and Dulce Domum is in my opinion, of as high an order as anything written in adult fiction (or at least anything I have ever encountered) and would bring a lump to the throat of even the hardest of nuts to crack, and if you haven't yet experienced it then I recommend it as the very next book you read. In fact I recommend it in exactly the same way even if you have!
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