Treacle Walker

Alan Garner's new novel, Treacle Walker, has been nominated for the short list of the 2022 Booker Prize. I first discovered the work of Alan Garner when I worked as a children's librarian in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I later introduced his children's books to my children and last year my grandson and I read Weirdstone of Brisingamen. I have also read Alan Garner's adult novels.

Treacle Walker is another work of folk tale and fantasy which also explores time and dimensions. Joseph Coppock is a young boy whose vision of the world is flawed due to a lazy eye. His good eye is covered by a patch in an attempt to strengthen the problem  eye. Joe is also recovering from an illness. He wiles away his time reading comics (especially Knockout), collecting birds' eggs and playing with his marbles. Joe' favourite strip in Knockout is Stonehenge Kit the Ancient Brit whose characters Kit, Whizzy the Wicked Wizard and the Brit Basher make appearances in this novel. One constant in Joe's life is that each day Noony, the train passes his house at noon.

One morning the rag-and-bone man, Treacle Walker, appears and he and Joe swap a pair of Joe's old pyjamas and a sheep bone for an old jar which once held cure-all ointment and a donkey stone. A friendship develops between Joe and Treacle Walker. When Treacle Walker allows Joe to play his special musical bone it sounds like a cuckoo, a bird that Joe has wanted to find, and the whistle's call is answered by the call of a cuckoo outside. Joe's quest to locate the cuckoo leads him to pool of water where he meets Thin Amren, a bog creature.

Throughout the novel Joe experiences the intertwining of real and magical encounters, at times through the illusion of a mirror world.

Treacle Walker is a short novel - 150 pages - and readers of other Alan Garner books will recognise illusions to events and objects in some of his other works and also to events in the author's early life. This adds another dimension to the novel but Treacle Walker can lead readers into the fantasy world of Alan Garner without this previous knowledge. This is a book to read slowly and enjoy.

Treacle Walker by Alan Garner a phenomenal late fable - The Guardian 30 October 2021  

Treacle Walker by Alan Garner - the book of a lifetime - The Guardian  1 November 2021

The critic and the clue: tracking Alan Garner's Treacle Walker - Strange Horizons 5 September 2022

Knockout - UK  Comics Wiki

Stonehenge Kit the Ancient Brit - Yesterday's newspapers

Donkey stones - Eli Whalley & Co

Weirdstone of Brisingamen

The Weirdstone of Brisingamen was the first children's book by Alan Garner and was originally published in 1960. Set in Cheshire on Alderley Edge, an area well known to the author, the reader is taken on an adventure into a world inhabited by an array of characters primarily from Welsh, Nordic and Cheshire myths and legends.

The story begins with the 'Legend of Alderley' - the tale of farmer who encountered a wizard who wanted to purchase his horse. While in the wizard's cave the farmer was allowed to take some precious stones in payment for the horse but he also inadvertently removed the Firefrost.

When Susan and Colin stayed on a farm with Gowther and Bess it soon became obvious that strange and possibly dangerous forces were gathering in the area. While the children explored the Edge they encountered Selina Place who tried to entice the children into her car. On another occasion they were chased by the svart-alfar (goblins) until the wizard, Cadellin, rescued them, showed them Fundindelve and told them about the missing Firefrost - the Weirdstone of Brisingamen.

When the stone was stolen Susan and Colin are determined to find it to return to Cadellin. During their often dangerous adventure they encounter dwarves, witches, goblins and elves among the host of magical and mythical characters. The sequel to this story is The Moon of Gomrath.

Stone Book Quartet

Alan Garner wrote four short stories which have now been compiled into one book - The Stone Book Quartet. The stories, now chapters, are The Stone Book, Granny Reardun, The Aimer Gate and Tom Fobble's Day and were written between 1976 and 1978. Each story occurs in a different generation and is based on members of Alan Garner's family who lived in the area near Alderley Edge in Cheshire.

Mary's father worked with stone and had helped build and repair many buildings in the village including St Philip's Church which is where Mary finds him when she takes him his lunch. Mary tells her father that she wants to learn to read a book. Instead he shows her how to read stone and takes her to a cave where she finds a strange mark.

Robert had spent his life working with stone, choosing only the best rocks to use for building projects. At times his grandson, Joseph, helped him. But the period for building with stone was coming to an end as people decided to use bricks to build their homes.  When Joseph finished school he decided to be apprenticed to the village blacksmith but he still had to tell his grandfather the news.

Young Robert had just finished making a cart to go down the hill. His Uncle Charlie was on leave from fighting during World War I and joined a number of the men who were to spend the day reaping corn. Young Robert was with them when they found the remains of a building in the grass and he used his cart to move the blocks of rock that his grandfather needed. Young Robert's father worked at the smithy and once a week he needed to correct the time on the chapel clock. When Young Robert took his father his baggin and climbed and explored the tower, he found what he thought was his name carved in the stone. But whose name was it?

It was winter during the Second World War and William had built a sled to use to go down the hill in the snow. However Stewart Allman commandeered the sled claiming he had the right to Tom Fobble it. William then went into the village to see his grandfather who was the blacksmith and helped his grandfather at the forge before they later went to his grandfather's house.

These stories create a picture of a life long gone. The stories are fiction but Alan Garner has based the stories on events and people in his family's history. The stories show respect for good craftsmanship and pride in what was sometimes dangerous and laborious work. However there is a feeling of comradeship among the characters and often the love of music.

The version of the book I read was an e-book.

Red Shift

Published in 1973 this book by Alan Garner is definitely written for older readers. The novel consists of three inter-twined narratives set at the end of Roman Britain with the demise of the Ninth Legion, during the English Civil War and in 1960s England. A focal point in each story is the finding of a late Neolithic / early Bronze age axe. The axe appears to affect the thinking and actions of one character in each story, at time providing additional powers or perception of a situation. Each of the affected men, Macey, Thomas and Tom, see blue and silver lights in the sky when something is going to happen. Tom also describes a red shift that occasionally appears.

War and / conflict conflict feature in the background to each story. The remnants of the retreating Ninth Legion face attack from Celtic tribes while, during the 1640s, the villagers await the inevitable attack from Irish Royalists. In the 1960s Tom and Jan try to avoid interference in their relationship from Tom's parents.

For each of the main characters, although they are each protected and loved by strong females, there is the constant fear that there is worse to come. In two of the narratives the axe head is hidden only to be rediscovered centuries later.

Sections of each narrative sometimes run into each other but this just adds to the mystique of the story. Much of the dialogue consists of short sentences, a technique used by Alan Garner in other works, creating a poetic effect to the narrative.

Having just read the memoir, Where shall we run to? it was interesting to see how Alan Garner has incorporated childhood experiences into the novel. As well as the description of Cheshire locations, including Mop Cow Hill the author incorporates lines from traditional songs which he was aware of as a child. All in all Red Shift is another challenging reading experience provided by Alan Garner.

Review - Book of a lifetime: Red Shift by Alan Garner (The Independent 28 January 2011).

In Red Shift, Jan and Tom correspond in code and a copy of a coded letter ends the book. The following link may be required to decipher the code. The Red Shift Code.

Where shall we run to?

This memoir by the author, Alan Garner, provides memories of a collection of incidents that occurred in his childhood in Cheshire during the Second World War. Alan Garner was born in  October 1934 so he was almost five at the commencement of the war. As well as memories of his schooldays and friends at this time there are frequent references to the war - wearing gas masks, fathers being away from home, children evacuated from Guernsey to Cheshire, finding unexploded devices.

Alan Garner describes life in the area around Alderley Edge where he grew up and where his family lived for many generations. Many of his books are set in this area of Cheshire and the chapter, Widdershins, provides a description of the region with many familiar names for readers of his books. Descriptions of some of the locals in the village plus the school staff are also provided. We also learn a little of the early childhood of Alan Garner including stays in hospital due to illness. He was, however, an inquisitive child who enjoyed the freedom of exploring his terrain, often with a friend.

The last three chapters of the book provide an update to stories told during the main section of the work. All in all this short work provides an account of life in part of rural England during wartime as well as an insight into the early life of an English author.

Interview - Alan Garner 'I just let the voice settle and I listened' (The Guardian 5 August 2018)

Review - Vignettes of a bygone English childhood (The Spectator 2018)

Strandloper

Alan Garner has included the legends and folklore of Cheshire in a number of his books but in Strandloper he also explores Aboriginal beliefs and legends. The main character is William Buckley who was born in Cheshire in 1776 but in 1803 was transported to Sullivan's Bay in Australia where he escaped and lived with Aborigines for 32 years until 1835 when he met a party of white men, including John Batman, who were exploring the area. William Buckley died in Hobart in 1856. In Australia the escaped convict, William Buckley, has become a legend in his own right.

However, this book is not a work of historical fiction. Instead the author has used the bare outline of the story of the man from Cheshire who lived with Aborigines on the other side of the world for more than 30 years and absorbed their culture to explore the similarities (and differences) of belief systems and folklore.

Strandloper is divided into sections - William's life in Cheshire and his involvement with old community traditions; transportation to Sullivan Bay; arrival at Sullivan Bay and his attempt to escape; William's assimilation with tribal people; meeting white people again and (in the book) his return to Cheshire.

Reading this book it was interesting seeing how a story that I knew was incorporated into the plot. However what I really liked about the book was the author's use of language which, in places, reads as a poem. Especially in the section on William's life with Aboriginal tribes, the words flow beautifully taking the reader into a new world.

This is a book that, I suspect, should be read more than once to fully appreciate and enjoy how the language develops the story. I loved reading this book.

NB:  A strandloper is an African bird (plover or sandpiper). William's friend, Edward, calls him a strandloper as William always has to be busy and on the move.

Culture Victoria - William Buckley
Australian Dictionary of Biography - William Buckley
William Buckley's escape - State Library of Victoria

Boneland

The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (published 1960) and The Moon of Gomrath (published 1963)  transported Susan and Colin and the reader into a world of magic, folklore and adventure. In 2012 Alan Garner published a follow-up book, though not really a sequel, in the series, Boneland. The first two books were published as books for children but Boneland is a novel written for adults.    

Two parallel stories are told in this short novel. Colin, now a professor of astronomy working at Jodrell Bank observatory, cannot remember events in his life before he was thirteen. However he does know that his sister went missing many years ago and that he must find her. The second story concerns the Watcher who is also on a quest to save his world.

Colin is referred to a psychotherapist, Meg, to help him resolve his irrational behaviour and attempt to understand the flash backs he is experiencing. Colin must learn to overcome his outbreaks of fear and sense of guilt before being able to contemplate a 'normal' life. Meanwhile The Watcher continues to seek for The Woman whose presence will keep the sky and stars in place.

In many ways this book reads as a poem as it describes the world of both Colin and The Watcher as they struggle in their quests. Like other Garner books mythology and fantasy are intertwined within the story but this novel also includes sections on science as Colin tries to rationalise his fears and feelings. The environment and history of this part of Cheshire also feature in the stories.

I read this book in one sitting and suspect that it is one that could be read a number of times with new discoveries in each reading.

Boneland (Literature) - tvtropes
Boneland by Alan Garner - PaperKnife
Boneland by Alan Garner - Review - Daily Telegraph 23 August 2012
Boneland by Alan Garner - Review by Ursula Le Guin - The Guardian 29 August 2012

First Light: a celebration of Alan Garner

When I worked as a children's librarian at the end of the 1960s I discovered the world of fantasy, published for children, written by Alan Garner. The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (published 1960) and The Moon of Gomrath (published 1963) were set around Alderley Edge in Cheshire and transported Susan and Colin, the two children in the stories, and the reader into a world of magic, folklore and adventure. In 1965 Elidor was published. This time the setting was Manchester in the 1950s and it brought magic into an everyday world. These three titles were generally read by children but can also be appreciated by adults. Garner's next book, The Owl Service (published 1967), based on Welsh legend, is classified as a book for teenagers.

I then lost track of the writing of Alan Garner until I read a review of his latest book when I was in England earlier this year. Where shall we run to? is a memoir about his early life. The review also mentioned a list of books by Alan Garner that I had not read. This included Red Shift, The Stonebook Quartet, Strandloper, Thursbitch, The Book That Thunders and Boneland. I obviously have some reading to catch up on.

Checking a library catalogue I also discovered the book First Light edited by Erica Wagner, a collection of articles, fiction and poetry prepared to celebrate the Alan Garner's eightieth birthday. This work was published in 2016.

Forty-three pieces of writing make up this work, all providing a glimpse into the life of Alan Garner and his writing or providing a reflection of the effect of Alan Garner's books on the contibutor. Authors such as Margaret Atwood, Susan Cooper, Neil Gaiman, Philip Pullman, Ali Smith and Salley Vickers, archaeologists such as Francis Pryor, Mark Edmonds, Richard Morris and John Prag, plus physicist Teresa Anderson are just a few of the contributors to this book.

Some of the contributors discovered the books of Alan Garner when they were children while others discovered his work later in life. Some of the contributors knew the Garners without being aware that Alan was a writer. Alan Garner's use of myth, folklore and legend in his stories features in this book along with  his use of the natural environment, especially in Cheshire, as a dominant feature in his writing. Garner's ongoing exploration of the archaeology of the area near his home in Cheshire is discussed as well as, at the other end of the spectrum, his interest in the work at Jodrell Bank, not far from his home.

For those who have enjoyed reading the work of Alan Garner, this compilation provides an excellent insight into the life and work of this British author.

Review - First Light a celebration of Alan Garner (The Guardian 12 August 2016)

Article - Fantasy author Alan Garner celebrated in new tribute, First Light (The Guardian 24 April 2015)