The Flint Heart

Description

The Flint Heart by Eden Phillpotts is a fairytale that makes use of all the classic components of the genre and manages to mix and twist them in a way that makes up a truly unique, often heroic and always entertaining story.

The story starts thousands of years ago when a Shaman carves out a heart-shaped stone talisman for a warrior to make him strong and powerful. The magic pebble does the job, then it is buried in a rural part of Dartmoor, where it spends the next 5,000 years covered in soil. It is eventually found in the 19th century by a local farmer who carries it around in his pocket, unaware of the pebble’s magic powers. The stone transforms him from the jovial, loving father he used to be into an evil-minded despot, and his children set out to seek magic help from all sorts of supernatural creatures to cure their father.

The Flint Heart makes an excellent read for children, but it is also a wonderfully layered text that carries important messages for grown-ups. The pebble makes its owner lust for power and transforms the once kindly pater familias into a corrupt, cruel and evil tyrant, feared by his family just as much as by his neighbors.

The Flint Heart is certainly a fairy story with wonderful pixies, dwarfs and other characters that make up any fairy tale, but it is also a story about how lust for power and greed transforms even the best of us and how love and purity can cure these ailments. It takes a pure heart to rescue him and there are actually two pure hearts, his two children, who save the man just about to surrender to his evil side.

The story is well-composed and well-written- whether it is read out aloud to younger children or enjoyed silently alone with a cup of tea, it is certainly a delight.
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