In The Lad of the Gad, Alan Garner has reworked five stories from the Gaelic layers of British folktale. Folk and fairy tales have not always been relegated to children, and older readers will appreciate Garner's ability to give these stories a new vitality for our time. Mr Garner's renderings are alive, vigorous and occasionally poetic, singing of sea and islands and the wide wild spaces of north and west! He has brought us five fine tales and had told them so that they fall well on the ear, hold the attention and stir the imagination. - The Literary Review.