| Title | : | Treacle Walker |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0008477795 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780008477790 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 152 |
| Publication | : | First published October 28, 2021 |
| Awards | : | Booker Prize Shortlist (2022) |
'Ragbone! Ragbone! Any rags! Pots for rags! Donkey stone!'
Joe looked up from his comic and lifted his eye patch. There was a white pony in the yard. It was harnessed to a cart, a flat cart, with a wooden chest on it. A man was sitting at a front corner of the cart, holding the reins. His face was creased. He wore a long coat and a floppy high-crowned hat, with hair straggling beneath, and a leather bag was slung from his shoulder across his hip.
Joe Coppock squints at the world with his lazy eye. He reads his comics, collects birds' eggs and treasures his marbles, particularly his prized dobbers. When Treacle Walker appears off the Cheshire moor one day - a wanderer, a healer - an unlikely friendship is forged and the young boy is introduced to a world he could never have imagined.
Treacle Walker Reviews
-
Update 07.09.2022: Shortlisted for for the Booker prize 2022. I did not get it but I was expecting it to be shortlisted. The ones capable to understand the novel praised it.
DNF at 40% and completely lost
The blurb did not attract me but it was the shortest title on the longlist and I found the audiobook on Scribd. I should have followed my instinct and stayed clear of this book.
The short novel made no sense to me whatsoever. I probably hit a language* and cultural barrier. The pages are full of old English and invented playful words. Moreover, there are quite a few English myths and folklore inserted and I do not know anything on the subject. Finally, it seems that the novel includes a few correlations with the author’s earlier work, again something I am not familiar with. To be honest, the book could have been written in Chinese and it would have been the same for me.
Also, based on all the discussions and review that I’ve read, the audiobook might not be the best way to discover this novel if you are not a native English speaker.
*I think it a good moment to remind people that English is not my 1st language so I am bound to make mistakes. You are more than welcome to correct me. I will modify my reviews, but please be polite. I do not tolerate trolling and insults. -
Now shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize.
5th in my longlist rankings (a ranking confirmed in a second read) and a book I would be delighted to see win.
My Bookstagram rating, ranking, summary review and Book themed Golden Retriever photo is here:
https://www.instagram.com/p/ChPVtpqMk...‘What’s amiss?’ said Joe. ‘I’ll tell you what’s amiss. I shall. I shall that. You come here, you and your box and your pots and your donkey stone, and fetch in enough to make me frit to death. You’re on about bones and all sorts; and then you’re off, some road or other, and I can’t tell where I am. I’ve got a pain in my eye. I can’t see proper. And I go down the bog and get stuck; and this chap with no clothes on and a daft silly hat, he sits up in the water and he makes no more sense than you do. He says I’ve got glammeritis, and then Stonehenge Kit, he’s gone, and so’s my best dobber; and Whizzy’s with a Brit Basher and they’re after Kit and the mirror’s all wrong then he’s back in the picture.
I read this book due to its longlisting for the 2022 Booker Prize – one of only 4 of the 13 books I had not read pre-longlist, and one from an 87 year old author for whom my knowledge did not previously extend much past his name and role as a part children’s, part adult’s author.
The book’s epigraph is from the Italian theoretical physicist and writer Carlo Rovelli translated “Time is ignorance” from his “The Order of Time” and (as Garner has explained in interviews) was inspired by a conversation with another theoretical physicist – his friend Bob Cywinski. The conversation started with the two discussing the differences between the observable physical universe of the latter and Garner’s ideas emerging from (as it were) nowhere – but the next day leas to Cywinski telling Garner about a local character: Walter Helliwell known as Treacle Walker – an eccentric tramp “able to cure all things except jealousy” which sparked Garner into thinking about treacle’s Middle English etymology as a medicine used by apothecaries/herbalists.
From there Garner seems to have thought more on the concept of time and the falseness of a linear, progressive view: “My [physicist] friend has read [the novel] and he says that he’s seen his subject through a novelist’s eyes and that, for him, it’s a new vision of quantum physics. It’s not; I’ve not done anything except look in a different way at different states and put them into a story where time collapses, and the whole thing takes place in no time – or, rather, not in time as we see it.”;
And then to have bought in ideas from:
His own life - particularly and most obviously his childhood – many of the ideas seem to be drawn from his recent childhood memoir “Where Shall We Run To?”, but also I think on the prospect of death (one of course close to him given his age but which was always present – hence the idea of time collapsing – given his childhood illnesses).
His lifelong study of (particularly but not exclusively – particularly in this book - British and Irish) folklore, legend, song and literature: examples I was able to identify – and I think there are many many more – and some of which are important to understanding the plot and others of which simply lend a few words of vocabulary included: the Welsh legend “Mabinogion”; hillside chalk horses; Samuel Johnson’s nonsense play “Hurlothrumbo”; Dr Robert’s Poor Man’s Friend Ointment from the early 1800s; the Grimm Brother’s “The Singing Bone”; the traditional mummers play “Pace Egg”; George Borrow’s “The Bible In Spain”; the Bonnacon from Medieval Bestaries; Native North American bone divination; the Irish mythological concept of a “thin place” between the physical tangible world and the “otherworld” of dreams and of the crane-skin magical possession bag, the “corr bolg”; bodies ceremonially buried in the bogs – like Tollund Man; the Finno-Ugric concept of the psychopomp or “conductor of souls” to the other world;
His lifetimes work “It brings together everything I’ve written, in 15,000 words.” – I suspect this book contains copious easter eggs for readers of Garner’s wider oeuvre
English colloquial language (squiffy, blinking heck, twitting, daft as a brush, tickety-boo, taradiddles) and traditions (a good knowledge of rag and bone men as well as marbles taxonomy is a useful adjunct to reading) of a certain age
Thresholds, boundaries and liminal imagery - doorsteps, mirrors, woods and bogs - What was in is out. And what was out is in.
And (linking nicely to the author’s own childhood and one of the early influences on his imagination) the British comic “Knockout” and particularly the strip “Stonehenge Kit The Ancient Brit” and his enemy “Whizzy the Wicked Wizard” and his “Brit Bashers” (note that I suspect in the hands of most literary fiction authors – particularly those under 60 – this would be a heavy handed allusion to Brexit or Boris Johnson – here refreshingly I do not think it is).
In terms of the plot – and there is just about some in this allusion and idea-filled novella, the book opens with ostensibly a convalescing young boy Joe Coppock (although I think Joe could equally be someone at the end of their life or both really as this is a book where time is collapsed) who marks his time by a daily midday train Noony. He has his house visited by a riddling rag-and-bone man Treacle Walker who in exchange for his ‘jamas and a bone from his treasure collection gives him a donkey stone (marked with a ancient horse - as shown on the book’s cover) and leaves a jar of ointment. Joe also plays a bone flute which seems to summon a cuckoo (but later turns out to have had wider impact). Joe wears a patch on one eye but starts to realise his bad eye can see things his good eye cannot – and is told by a bog dwelling man – Thin Amren - that he has a form of second sight. Thereafter Joe finds his ostensible day life, his dreams and the world of his comic book heroes merging and overlapping – and perhaps only late in the book really understands both his fate and destiny.
Overall I found this a fascinating addition to the longlist – one where I think many readers (particularly non-English readers) will I think understandably struggle with accessibility, but one that I really loved.
It is both temporally ambiguous and meticulously detailed and that itself (like so much of the book) links back to Rovelli’s book the first two sections of which are The Crumbling of Time and The World Without Time and the third of which (from a Wiki summary) argues that “the apparent flow of time is due to the inability to observe all the microscopic details of the world”.
Like many of the best books, but particularly appropriately here, this novella reminded me of my lifelong love of reading (from childhood to late 50s) and, again particularly appropriately, it also reminded me of how the best books take you out of time and place – making you simultaneously the child reading a book in bed and the adult using literary fiction – however apparently cryptic - to help to make sense of the world.
‘Fair do’s. Treacle Walker?’
‘Joseph Coppock.’
‘What is it you want for you? What is it you want most? For you. Not some wazzock else.’
‘Never has a soul asked that of me.’
‘What’s the answer?’ Treacle Walker leaned his head against the timber behind him and looked up into the stack.
‘To hear no more the beat of Time. To have no morrow and no yesterday. To be free of years.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Oblivion. Home.’
‘That’s not daft.’
‘It is everything.’ -
Now Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2022
I'm really torn about this one: It's not hard to see the literary merit of this enigmatic meditation on time, death, and the absurdity of life, but the text strongly relies on context that might not be available to many readers, and it requires an interest in British folklore (which, frankly, I do not have - but that clearly shouldn't be the authors concern). Garner tells the story of Joseph Coppock, a child who lives alone and is visitied by the title-giving Treacle Walker, a traveling rag-and-bone man (hence: Walker) who says that he can heal all things, save jealousy (hence: Treacle, meaning antidote in Middle English). Joe trades a pair of pajamas (rag) and a bone for a vase and stone that turn out to have magical properties, including the capacity to see what other people can't see. Many strongly metaphorical events unfold, until it becomes clear what Treacle's real function is.
You probably have to be a 87-year-old veteran narrator like Garner to pull off a story that fully indulges in a wide field of assocations in order to grapple with classic literary themes: We get life as a dream, mirorrs that reflect/shatter/disappear/never exist in the first place, we get the blindness/knowledge trope, man and nature, the question whether reality actually exists, etc. Apparently, there also many references to classic British stories plus the books of Garner, none of which I'm familiar with, but while I'm sure this information would have highly enhanced the experience, it's not crucial to know in order to get the gist of what's going on.
Most interestingly, Garner experiments with local dialect and expressions (he resides in Cheshire) with a strong emphasis on the musicality of language, often creating sounds that are reminiscent of children's songs or counting rhymes. I have to admit though that this makes the text sometimes rather hard to understand for foreign-language readers like me, and probably also non-Brits.
So I see the value of this short novel and I greatly enjoyed many of the affecting images and ideas that Garner employs, but due to the specific language and the many references to fantasy, folklore and myths - all three not my fave subjects -, this is at least in part not for me. The book did introduce me to a new (for me!) author and his unusual body of work though, and I'm glad I got to learn about that. -
Shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize
Treacle Walker is the first Alan Garner book I have ever picked up. Needless to say, the book being on the Booker shortlist prompted me to give it a try.
The story revolves around a young boy Joseph “Joe” Coppock, who has been unwell and wears a patch on one eye for rectification of his lazy eye. One day he meets a rag-and-bone man by the name of Treacle Walker who also claims to be a healer of all ills save for jealousy. Joe acquires a “donkey stone” and an old chipped pot of ointment called “Poor Man’s Friend” in exchange for an old pair of his pyjamas and a lamb’s shoulder blade. These two mystical objects and his acquaintance with Treacle Walker are just the beginning of a series of fantastical adventures for Joe- from meeting Thin Amren, a bog-man who tells him that his trouble with his eyes is “glamourie” wherein each of his eyes shows him different worlds- one that everyone can see and the other that is not visible to others to characters who jump out of the pages of his favorite comic book, a mirror dimension and much more.
To be honest, I read and re-read portions of the narrative as my initial reading left me a bit baffled. I feel I was unable to comprehend what the story was about in its totality. The concept of time – movement, fluidity and the perception of the present as opposed to what is not obvious- is an overarching theme in this story. I enjoyed the cast of interesting characters, fantastical elements and the dream-like setting of the story but I did face some difficulty in following the native dialect. I understand that some of the words may be rooted in folklore or myth or the author’s imagination but a Glossary would have been helpful. I believe those who have read the author’s previous works would appreciate this novel more than I have. -
A rather unaccessible shortlist choice from the Booker Prize jury. Seeing and sight, cuckoos and mirrors, plus myths and time in general are definite themes, but overall I found it hard to get my bearings in this book.
An unique pick from the 2022 Booker Prize Jury. If I need to compare this book with anything
Can Xue her work and the recent Green Knight movie come to mind. The titular character reminds me a bit of the natural world/spirit talking in
Lanny and the writing, showing love for nature and myths, in solemness felt at times like
J.R.R. Tolkien.
A real plot is hard to discern, the ending is sweet enough with Joe showing some care for a supernatural being he kind of travelled with, but the way to there has a lot of references to English folklore and scenes I found hard to follow. Also the language is far from everyday regularly used English. In a way
Treacle Walker made me think of aboriginal dreamtime artworks I see in ethnological museums, with the focus on a communal history of a country and supernatural entities interacting with people.
Overall I am not the best suited reviewer of this book, and I enjoyed it less than people more well versed in either
Alan Garner his body of work or English folktale and mythology in general, but an excitingly eccentric selection by the jury regardless. -
'Treacle Walker?' said Thin Amren, 'Treacle Walker. Me know that pickthank psychopomp? I know him, so I do. I know him. Him with his pots for rags and his bag and his bone and his doddering nag and nookshotten cart and catchpenny oddments. Treacle Walker? I’d not trust that one’s arse with a fart.’
Treacle Walker opens with a boy (or is he still a boy?) Joseph Coppock in his house when he hears the cry of a rag and bone man.
'Rag and bone' said the man. 'And you shall have pot and stone. That's fair. Or isn't it?'
Joe gives the man, the frustratingly enigmatic Treacle Walker, an old pair of pyjamas and a lamb's shoulder blade from his 'museum', largely a collection of birds' eggs. In turn he is invited to take his pick from a magical treasure chest of ornate cups, saucers, platters and jugs, but picks the most plain:
Joe took out every piece and laid them on the cart.
‘This,’ said Joe.
‘That is the least,’ said the man.
‘It’s the bestest.’
Joe held a round jar no bigger than his hand.
‘It is small,’ said the man.
‘I don’t care.’
‘Of little price.’
‘I don’t care. It’s grand. Grand as owt.’
The jar was white, glazed, and chipped. Under the rim was painted in blue: ‘Poor Mans Friend’, and beneath, ‘price 1/ 1 ½’. On the other side was: ‘Prepared only by Beach & Barnicott, SUCCESSORS TO THE LATE Dr. Roberts, Bridport.’
[link to picture]
And he is given a donkey stone (used traditionally to scour stone steps):
The man opened his bag and took something out. ‘Here.’ It was a stone, rough and grey, the size and shape of a bar of soap.
‘Blinking heck.’
He put the stone into Joe’s hand. One side was plain; on the other was cut the outline of a horse, legs and tail outstretched, head forward, long.
‘We are equal. The trade is done.’
‘And what am I supposed to do with this effort?’ said Joe.
‘Use it.’
‘How?’
‘As you have need.’
‘You’re twitting me,’ said Joe. ‘I’m going in. I mustn’t catch the sun.’
‘You would be swift to outrun that one,’ said the man. ‘The craven nidget who flees the dark and will not come back till morning.’
[link to picture]
(The donkey stone pictured actually has a lion branding, from Eli Whalley & Co, who at their peak in the 1930s manufactured 2.5 million such stones a year and who were the last manufacturer of the product in the world, ceasing business in 1979. The motif on Joe's stone is based on the Uffington White Horse, also shown on the novel's cover)
And these two items prove key to the adventure that follows, one that involves, inter alia, the characters from the 1940s comic Knockout coming to life:
Knockout was the best comic, better than The Beano or The Dandy, because it had daft ideas. And the best in it was Stonehenge Kit the Ancient Brit, who was always fighting Whizzy the Wicked Wizard and his chums the Brit Bashers. Whizzy wore a pointed hat. This time, Kit was falling out of a tree, and he dropped thump woof bam crash on Whizzy, who was having forty- one winks in a hammock, which is a lot of holes tied with string, and Kit bundled him up in the hammock to take him as a prisoner for King Kongo and swap him for two cigarette- cards. He met a Brit Basher disguised as a milk maid.
[link to picture]
Joe is, at times, as confused (and exasperated) as some readers seem to be with the novel, but wonderfully the seemingly nonsensical paragraph below actually makes complete sense when reading the book:
‘What’s amiss?’ said Joe. ‘I’ll tell you what’s amiss. I shall. I shall that. You come here, you and your box and your pots and your donkey stone, and fetch in enough to make me frit to death. You’re on about bones and all sorts; and then you’re off, some road or other, and I can’t tell where I am. I’ve got a pain in my eye. I can’t see proper. And I go down the bog and get stuck; and this chap with no clothes on and a daft silly hat, he sits up in the water and he makes no more sense than you do. He says I’ve got glammeritis, and then Stonehenge Kit, he’s gone, and so’s my best dobber; and Whizzy’s with a Brit Basher and they’re after Kit and the mirror’s all wrong then he’s back in the picture. And there’s this here.’ Joe pulled the crumpled paper from his pocket and lobbed it across the fire basket. ‘What’s happening? What the heck’s up?’
Now I must admit to my almost complete ignorance hitherto of Alan Garner's life and works. I am sure for those familiar with both there are many more layers to this novel, such as those highlighted on the
Strange Horizons blog. Garner himself commented in the Guardian on the autobiographical nature of the work: Joseph Coppock is the me I could have become if I’d not had the severe academic training that I did. Treacle Walker is what I could have become if I hadn’t jumped ship at Oxford and got off the road to academia. And there are also many references on this unofficial Alan Garner website:
http://alangarner.atspace.org/linkstw...
But for novices such as myself, the novel (with some modest Googling) is sufficient unto itself, and a truly magical work.
4.5 stars rounded to 5 and one I would love to see win the overall prize. -
Sadly, I was incapable of seeing the magnificence of this novel. It’s short-listed for the Booker, and it was too far in the fantasy genre for me to understand. Plus, the wording….too archaic or too much local vernacular which went beyond my head of comprehending.
I don’t even know what I read. I went past my usual 50 pages before giving up. I thought, “it’s short-listed! It must be relevant!” I guess I’m not relevant…..oh well…..I gave it the ‘ole college try.
Please someone tell me….who/what is the point of Thin Amren? I couldn’t even understand his comic books.
Anyway, although I finished the 152 page story (thank God it wasn’t longer), I cannot rate it because I didn’t “get” it. -
Treacle Walker is a rare story of immense beauty. I don't profess to understand the plot entirely, but a simplified interpretation might be to say it's a tale about the friendship between a rag-and-bone man, Treacle Walker, and a young lad, Joseph Coppock. Garner tells it in a comic strip fashion, although it isn't a comic. His use of imagery and how he colours his scenes and characters is akin to what an artist does with a palette. In my imagination, I had constant visions of L. S. Lowry's matchstick people. However, the imagery has a definite greyness that steers it toward the comic book page appearance. Thin Amren, in particular, could have stepped straight out of a Lowry canvas. I read the novel twice; the first time with a dictionary at my side to look up the plethora of old English words I'd never heard before; the second time without the aid of a dictionary. The art of making things appear to be what they are not is a constant in the narrative. In fact, Treacle Walker uses the word glamourie, which means just that, in explaining why certain incidents have occurred. Garner is also a wizard at editing his work; example after example appears throughout the novel; 'Can't never did.' - 'I can't be. Ever. At all. But if you dream, I can. Happen we'll meet. Happen we'll not. But we'll remember. "Cut my throat and hope to die." We'll not forget.' His editing skills are on par with William Keepers Maxwell Jr. 'A small miracle,' states the New Statesmen in their review. I agree.
-
I feel I should preface this with the fact that I'm a huge Alan Garner fan and have been since reading his
Elidor and
The Owl Service as a child. The latter, especially, has been a book I've returned to and still enjoy as an adult with its retelling of one of the myths from
The Mabinogion. His
Red Shift is a book wasted on kids, and I have a huge affection for the Weirdstone books (though have just realised that I've never read the third part of the trilogy,
Boneland, which brings back Colin as an adult).
All this is background to me saying that I found Treacle Walker messy as a book. Now, I don't mind a book that is allusive rather than linear, that expects readers to engage imaginatively with the text and fill spaces in a creative way - happy to do all those things - but here the fragments we have to work with feel raggedy and, sometimes, a bit arch. I also don't understand why the language is so old-fashioned: not archaic, not a throwback to Old or Middle English, or the alchemical Latin that Joe reads into his eye test, but something that feels like 1950s cockney (ticketty-boo, old boy, me old mucker!).
This almost feels like a sort of greatest hits of Garner's work: the rag and bone man with the white horse recalls the pony-trap that meets Colin and Susan at the station at the start of Weirdstone and is also a reference to the Alderley myth of the sleeping army with their white horses which will wake and come to the rescue in England's hour of need. There are bog-men and magical artefacts, mirrors and stones, the cuckoo perhaps a reminder of the owls.
Garner's trademark liminal places where worlds meet and seep into each other here seems to be the threshold between life and an afterlife, with both the Noony and the rag and bone trap possibly vehicles to carry Joe over. Time collapses as it does in Red Shift and Joe seems to simultaneously be boy and old man. Reality is questioned and there's an old, old play on what it means to see and not see.
For me, I kept waiting for this all to cohere in some way but it never really did. The classic books Garner has written still stand up to contemporary readings because the language is not dated in the way it is here. In addition, I found the ideas wheeling around in this book to have been treated, largely, more effectively in previous books, though perhaps the nearness of death has greater resonance here, if that is how we read Joe.
I'm delighted to see Garner so unexpectedly on the Booker long-list, but sad that I found this so flabby and disjointed. -
This charming little book is both an excellent introduction to Garner's writing and also a capstone on his long career. Weaving folklore and myth into this tale, Garner has a talent for showing magic spilling into every day objects. The story is a celebration of the archaic and explores how time can move and yet seem to stand still, both through images and characters. The dialogue is quirky and timeless, concrete yet somehow elusive. Clocking in at just over 100 pages (in large font), this makes for a quite enjoyable hour or two.
-
Ok, first the good news: I did like this marginally better than I did when I first read it back in 2019, when it was longlisted for the Booker under the title
Lanny. And it only took a little over an hour to read, so I didn't waste TOO much of my time on it (although how this and the Keegan novella qualified as 'substantial' is beyond me - at least it makes getting through the longlist quicker).
The bad news is that I was lost and confused as often as I was beguiled and enchanted. Apparently having a Ph.D. in English folklore/mythology helps decipher this - but such is beyond my ken. As one goes along, one can sometimes glean what the odd words and phrases (Noony, dobber, etc.) actually mean; others required extensive Googling to comprehend (Corr Bolg). Ultimately, although I kinda/sorta got the gist of what the whole thing was trying to say, probably much of it flew right over my head ... kind of like the giant cuckoo that rends the sky in the final scene.
The other good news for fans of this is that it currently occupies the 13th spot in my Booker rankings, and until the past two years, in which I championed the ultimate winner, that coveted spot had guaranteed it winning.
(Update - so now two other longlisters have supplanted it at the bottom of the list - but this is apparently the odds-on favorite to win anyway!)
PS ... would also appreciate someone telling WTF that is on the cover - haven't a clue there either! It looks like a chicken being anally raped by a stick to me... -
Alan Garner is, without doubt, one of the UK's greatest fantasy writers. I was privileged to grow up with his books, which aged in audience as I did, peaking for me with The Owl Service. Garner also visited my (and his) school, which the book is dedicated to, when I was 12, a really important moment in my young life. But I lost some enthusiasm with his adult titles, which were both difficult to follow and depressing. However, now well into his 80s, Garner has produced what is arguably his best yet.
Although Treacle Walker is a very compact book in large print, it is so intensely written that it still has considerable heft - I've seen it described by someone as poetry, and although I wouldn't personally say that, like the best poetry it does pack a huge amount into relatively few words. The book's protagonist is a young boy, but this is not a children's book. The closest parallel I have is Ray Bradbury's wonderful Something Wicked This Way Comes - the book captures much of the essence of childhood, but does so in a way that appeals to the nostalgic side of an adult who can see far more in it than a young reader.
Like all Garner's work a sense of place and time is hugely important. As someone brought up in Lancashire, the use of language from Garner's Cheshire youth evokes many memories, though you don't have to have that background to appreciate it. Just the references to donkey stones and rag and bone men, for example, bring so much back. There is even a reference to the old Pace Egg plays performed by mummers in the North West, when a character of Garner's says 'I have been through Hickety, Pickety, France and High Spain' - compare this with the doctor's claim in the traditional Pace Egg play to have travelled 'Through Italy, Sickly, High Germany, France and Spain'.
At one level, the book is a folk fantasy, and of course Garner does this brilliantly well. He has always combined local material with wider ranging concepts (for example the use of Ragnarok in his first novel), but never more so than here, where one of the elements, also featuring on the cover, is the white horse at Uffington, a powerful image, coincidentally situated near where I now live. But there is also more going on, particularly in the ending, suggesting a totally different take on what has occurred with a distinctly darker undercurrent.
Overall, this is a masterpiece, a book I will re-read many times. If it is a swan song, then like the legendary original it is something of intense beauty. Remarkable. -
Longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize
I…did not understand this book. It’s definitely unique. But upon first reaction, it doesn’t feel like a book for me.
In ways this reminded me of Neil Gaiman’s
The Ocean at the End of the Lane. You have to be okay with the sort of nonsensical whimsy of that type of fantasy world. I’m sure there’s a lot to unpack in this story, but it just didn’t feel accessible to the average reader.
It’s about a boy (?) named Joe who is visited by a man named Treacle Walker with whom he trades a pair of old pajamas and a lamb shoulder bone for a jar and a donkey stone. Then some weird stuff happens with a comic book and a man in a bog. Honestly, I couldn’t tell you. I’ll be curious to talk about this one with book club eventually because then maybe I’ll actually understand what this was about. -
Shortlisted for the Book Prize 2022
My reading journey with this book:
Read to 25%. Realise I have no idea what is going on. Start again. Read to 25%. Realise I still have no idea what is going on. Start again. Read to 25%. Realise I have no idea what is going on but solider on. Read to 70%. Realise I am losing the will to live because nothing about this book is engaging me.
DNF at 70% -
Absolute, indecipherable nonsense. I can only presume that there’s some kind deeply niche knowledge required to make any sense of this which I evidently don’t have. Strong no from me.
-
I forgot I even requested a copy of this from library when it was long listed for the Booker Prize, but when my turn finally came around and I saw how short it was I figured what the heck.
A kid (assuming Jack’s a kid since he reads comics and plays marbles all day) trades a lamb bone for an empty jar of “Poor Man’s Friend” and a donkey stone (WTF is that? Sounds like a name my hillbilly kin would come up with for a petrified turd out in a pasture). Either one or a combo of the two give Jack new sight - where his favorite comic book characters come to life.
Okay, so I didn’t get it - and please do not attempt to mansplain it to me. The Booker Prize is my white whale. I attempt to read a few every year – most of the time I’m not smart enough to understand what made them so potentially award worthy and occasionally I find something special (*cough Percival Everett cough*) -
Alan Garner’s Treacle Walker is such a steaming pile of book, OF COURSE it’s the favourite to win this year’s Booker Prize! It’s garbage like this that turn people off from reading and awards-nominated books in general.
Garner does such an inept job of telling his story, I can’t even provide a basic summary to start this review. There’s a “character” called Joe and he seems to have a problem with one of his eyes, which somehow makes him able to see magical (I think?) beings called Treacle Walker and Thin Amren. Some characters from his comic come to life and one of them “dies”. The end.
Huh?
Joe seems to be a child but we don’t know because we never find out what he does - does he go to school, or have a job, or have parents? No idea - as none of those things are mentioned. What are his goals? No idea. Ditto any motivation. Things just happen to him - incomprehensible things. Who or what are Treacle Walker and Thin Amren? No idea. They’re mysterious and probably magical - just ‘cos. What do they want? No idea. What does anyone in this book want? No idea. What’s the point of the story? No idea. Is Joe crazy? Maybe. Am I crazy for finishing this rubbish? Well…
It’s such bad writing, and these are the most basic elements of storytelling, so it’s amazing to me that anyone could think to praise such incompetence, much less nominate it for one of the most famous literary prizes in the world!
I looked up Knockout Comics after reading this and found out that it’s a comic that ran from 1939 to 1963, before having a brief failed revival in the 1970s, so that gives you a timeframe - if you thought to look up this element of the story that is, because, you’ve guessed it, Garner doesn’t include any context in when this takes place either. Not that it matters I suppose but then it’s not clear what - if anything - about this story matters at all!
The story’s set in a small rural community and I think the dialect is northern English, Yorkshire-ish, maybe. You’d have to look up the words Garner includes in his gibberish, I mean dialogue - eg. “corr bolg”, “tarradiddles”, “hurlothrumbo”, and “lomperhomock”, all of which makes the title character sound like a bargain bin BFG - because no explanations are provided and, hey, who doesn’t love constantly interrupting their reading to look things up, eh?
Those words don’t really make a huge difference in the narrative - they provide a sense of local colour more than anything - but it’s just another example of the writing providing no way in for the reader in figuring out what the hell’s going on.
The one thing holding this book back from potentially winning the Booker is that Alan Garner is an old white man - tantamount today to having a swastika face tattoo, in some social circles - so it’ll probably go to Elizabeth Strout’s Oh, William!, which is an equally dreary book, but Strout is an old white woman, which gives her the edge (even though her novel is about an old white man).
Treacle Walker: corr bolg, what a complete load of tarradiddles! -
This is not a novel for younger readers as some reviews suggest. The wondrous world of magic with a young sickly boy Joe at its heart can be deceptively seen as a fable of child’s fantasy. Far from it. This is a fable of life, death, and time, with the blurred line between possible and impossible, real and mysterious, childhood and old age, that is already hinted in the epigraph quoting Carlo Rovelli that “Time is ignorance.” It’s the kind of book that is difficult to summarize, let alone review.
Besides Joe, other “characters” are two (semi-)mythic figures Treacle Walker and Thin Amren, the comic characters from the Knockout magazine of Garner’s childhood, a cuckoo, the house in which Joe lives, its chimney, mirror, surrounding landscape… Both Treacle Walker and Thin Amren repeatedly say that,What is out is in. What is in is out.
And from the eponymous Treacle we hear also this:'To hear no more the beat of Time. To have no morrow and no yesterday. To be free of years.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Oblivion. Home.'
(No, this is not the children’s book.)
In my reading, these words bracket what happens inside Garner’s magical story rooted in the local (and some universal) fables as well as language/dialect, which makes it fascinating and at the same time challenging if unfamiliar with the allusions and references. Gumble's Yard’s
review identifies a number of alluded legends, literary and folkloristic motifs. It is worth getting familiar with them first before embarking on the journey of Garner’s imagination and his approach to life at the sunset age of wisdom with a youthful heart. -
This book jolted me back to stories from my childhood, of being read fairy tales from 1930s-era books imported from England. The concept of old rag and bone men with magic eye ointment and a naked man in a leather cap popping up in a bog seemed like familiar territory ;)
It's the language that makes this a pleasure to read, it's cute and perplexing while still being fairly easy to guess the meaning of. As a big fan of tickety-boo in everyday conversation, I was easily sold on this style.
There is a lot here to engage with and one reading would barely do it justice. Yes, I think a background in the author's work, folklore and much more besides, would help but I maintain it is not essential. You can just enjoy this as a story about magic eye cream to start with. Or revel in comic book characters, "Kit the Ancient Brit” and “Whizzy Wizard" leaving the page and chasing themselves through a Ted Chung-Esque mirrored reality.
I didn't get even half of it. I didn't mind. -
‘What’s happening? What the heck’s up?’
That question voiced early on by the book’s protagonist, Joseph Coppock, understandably is also the question of many a reader of the book. I’d never read Alan Garner before and apparently it follows on to a great extent from his earlier work, but it also reminded me of a novel I read earlier this year by J. Robert Lennon,
Subdivision, in that it seems to take place in a sort of bardo realm influenced by our conception of quantum mechanics, and in which the protagonist has to overcome challenges that draw on mythological concepts as they gradually come to an understanding and acceptance of the current state of their personhood. Only this one uses much more archaic northern English dialect and the tone is closer to twee than malevolent.
I enjoyed the writing and the dialect and the words I had to look up, and am glad to have been introduced to Garner; it has made me interested in reading his other, presumably meatier novels. This one was just too short and not filled out enough for what it was trying to do for my preference, but it was a fairly frolicsome trip. -
Shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize
Alan Garner is a well known name in Britain, as his children's books have been popular in the UK since the 60s. I have never read any of those, and his national treasure status makes this book rather difficult to rate and review objectively without that background.
The book occupies a weird netherland between YA and the reflective literature of old age - at one level it could read as a children's story/parable but it touches on deeper themes notably the nature of time itself - the epigraph comes from Carlo Rovelli's
The Order of Time, a book which explores the nature of time as understood by modern physicists and the paradoxes that are encountered when trying to pin down its objective meaning. There are points in the story where this influence is clear, but that does not make it difficult to read. Garner also loves obscure British vernacular language and at times invents his own coinages.
So a book that has some complex ideas but can still be read in a couple of hours. I have no idea how to compare it objectively with the rest of the longlist. -
(4.5)
Delightful (and very sad) sign off, so it seems.
'The choice was yours. You chose the glamourie. You could have chosen shimmerings. You did not.' -
Rating: ⭐⭐
Genre: Literary Fiction + Fantasy
What was that? I honestly did not understand this novella. I don’t know what is the purpose of its story at all. It started as a charming fantasy, but then it kept going on and on with no goal or particular direction. It ended up going nowhere. This was supposed to be based on English folklore, but I couldn’t compare it with any I know.
All I got from the story is that Treacle Walker is a man who meets a young man called Joe. The two make a trade. Joe ends up with a donkey stone, and then he uses this stone and more nonsense happens. The best thing about this book is that it was short, so it did not require much time invested in it. I don’t think I would have finished it if it was an entire novel. Not only the story, but I also don’t even understand the cover! What is that supposed to be on the cover? A pig? A chicken? -
I thoroughly enjoyed this little book! A young boy is trying to understand the world he lives in, alone in an isolated cottage in the English countryside. The story weaves in and out of fantasy, mystery, sorcery and reality — but what is reality?
-
Like spending an afternoon with the butterfly from
The Last Unicorn. -
Shortlisted for Booker prize 2022
I think sometimes we need to accept that we can take a journey without seeing everything. Yes, the language was difficult for a non-English native reader, but I liked the atmosphere and how it constantly made me feel. I should say that the hero of the story has an eye problem and I wear glasses since I was 10. Maybe that's the additional help that this kind of story needs to work. -
Sincerest thanks to those intrepid readers who went before me and paved the way. It helped to know that this little echo of ancient tales would be all but inaccessible if I wasn't prepared to do some research along the way.
I've always loved wordplay, riddles, and puzzles, so this was quite satisfying in that regard. And it was a pleasant surprise to discover countless new words; many of which, upon first encounter, had struck me as nonsensical. The protagonist, young Joe Coppock, doesn't have internet access and so was not as fortunate. Witnessing him mistake "Axis mundi" for "Ask this Monday" and "psychopomp" for "cycle pump", I was able to feel intellectually superior to a fictional character...which provided yet another layer to the comedy.
For all his feistiness, Joe is ill. And despite his gift-giving, Treacle Walker has come to take something precious. And although I think I figured several things out, I know I left part of this fable unexplored. -
Shortlisted 2022 Booker Prize
[Bumped this to a 5 because after a rereading I love it so much].
Garner's Treacle Walker is a treat of a read. As a story-telling Bag and Bone man, Garner cast the glamourie on me and bestowed the gift of second sight. I've visited faery and experienced time and narrative twisted and distilled across the landscape of his beloved Cheshire landscape of Alderley Edge. I've encountered shape-shifting boggarts and bogles (ghostly like faerie creatures) that have taken on the form of comic book characters (Whizzy and The Brit Basher) and pursued me out of those books and through a hall of mirrors. I've been haunted by the call of the Cuckoo and met the bog man Thin Amren. I've been immersed in this magical, mythic domain and it's amazing.
In this slight (in word count and page number) book Garner shares the tale of young Joseph Coppock, living in a small cottage in a rural English country setting (there are refernces here to hillocks, mounds and Middle-yard) clearly situating this in mythical / folkloric territory of middle-earth and the magic imbued landscape of Garner's home territory (Cheshire). Joseph enjoys his comic books, playing with marbles and the reassurance provided by the regularity of Nonny (a train) passing by: "Noony rattled past the house and the smoke from he enging blew across the yard. It was midday. The sky shone" . Joseph meets Treacle Walker (a bag and bone man) and invites him across the threshold and into his home. After magical gifts and objects the journey gets going as Joseph's sight is transformed and he sees the world anew and in some ways renewed. 'Treacle' in medieval language has connotations with medicine, so we have ideas of a healer. As the story unfolds I gained the impression that Treacle is teaching and initiating young Joseph to see differently, passing on the wisdom and knowledge. All the cryptic exchanges and expressions are somewhat like Zen Koans, prodding Joseph (and us) to see that magical, mythic glimmer that for Garner renews and sustains.
Like all apprentices Joseph must be tested (as must we) and so he is, we are, and through that testing he/we gain insight and knowledge. Some readers (and reviewers) comment on the difficulty and opacity of elements of this tale, with all the folk-lore, myth references and allusions. For me, even without knowing that detail, it's fairly straightforward to follow the drift and context, and that disorientation perhaps mirrors Joseph's experience and is required for the journey ahead. Early in the meeting with Treacle Joseph is buffetted by a dark wind: "A wind threw the door onto him, shoving him against the stack. And night spilled in. Snow stung his face. He forced the door against the wind and the latch clanged shut. he clung to the chimney post. But night was in the room, a sheet of darkness, flapping from wall to wall. It changed shape, swirling, flowing .... There was a whispering silence; and on the floor snow melted to tears".
Garner in interview has shared that Treacle is based on Walter Helliwel, a tramp who claimed to heal “all things but jealousy”. He was born at the beginning of the twentieth century, near Huddersfield. But I like to read him as Garner, this elderly mystic figure, whispering into my ear and taking my hand to glimpse this magic even for a brief moment.
After my first read I did some quick research to gain insights on the various layers of folklore and myth grounding this work and its connection to Garner's early novels. There are plenty of blogs, Garner interviews and interpretations out there that even after 30 minutes or so I was able to go back in for a second read and enjoy new ways of seeing and understanding the magical shimmer. I started with the links and resources provided here:
https://thebookerprizes.com/the-booke...
https://britishfairies.wordpress.com/...
It's worthwhile spending time with Treacle and Joe listening to the tunes played on the bone pipe: "It was a tune with wings, trampling things, tightened strings, boggarts and bogles and brags on their feet; the man in the oak, sickness and fever, that set in long, lasting sleep the whole great world with the sweetness of sound the bone did play"
Toward's the book's conclusion there's a deeply moving exchange between Joe and Treacle in which Joe asks:
'What is it you want for you? What is it you want most? For you. Not some wazzock else'
'Never has a soul asked that of me.'
What's the answer?'
Treacle Walker leaned his head against the timber behind him and looked up into the stack.
'To hear no more the beat of Time. To have no morrow and no yesterday. To be free of years'. He closed his eyes. 'Oblivion. Home.'
'That's not daft.'
'It is everything'.
For this wondrous gift of a book I truly hope Garner finds his Home that is everything. -
I came to this book because of its inclusion on the 2022 Booker Prize long list. Whilst I have very fond memories of reading Garner’s books when I was a child, that was 40-50 years ago and I’m afraid I didn’t keep reading him into adulthood so our paths separated and I was unaware of this new book (and of many of the preceding books, which, it turns out is a shame because apparently a lot of them are referenced in this new work).
As soon as the long list was announced, my Goodreads feed started to fill with comments about this book. One thing that emerged very quickly was references to its accessibility for non-native English speakers. It uses a lot of obscure words. I have to say that the comments I read made me think I was heading into Finnegan’s Wake territory which means that, when I actually came to read the book, it was actually a lot more straightforward than I was expecting. Of course, I have the advantage of being a native English speaker and I can understand the difficulties the book might present for others reading it.
On the surface, this is the story of Joe Coppock who is visited by a rag-and-bone man called Treacle Walker. When he exchanges a pair of pyjamas (rags) and a bone for a stone with the Uffington white horse etched on to it and a glass bottle, a whole chain of events is set in progress. By the way, the book doesn’t say “Uffington white horse” but it does provide a textual description and it is that white horse that is shown on the cover.
I am fairly sure that any plot summary I try to give here would be both counter-productive (you need to experience the book yourself, I think) and confusing (there’s so much going on that I would get it wrong and miss important bits out). And I think that there are probably multiple ways to interpret the novel. In fact, I think that a reader will probably find multiple ways to interpret the novel with their preferred understanding changing several times as the book progresses.
But any novel that can include comic strips, folklore AND quantum theory is always going to be a lot of fun to read. And that’s exactly what this book is. -
This slender fable-like novel was a bit of a head scratcher. Having seen the baffled responses from a number of readers I was prepared for a cryptic tale going into this book and I think it's fair to be warned that it's not a standard narrative. At its centre is a boy with a lazy eye named Joseph Coppock who lives on his own reading comics, collecting odd bits from nature and playing with marbles. One day the eponymous Treacle Walker, a rag-and-bone man (someone who travels around a certain area collecting unwanted household items and clothing) approaches his house. Joseph barters with this pungent man exchanging a literal rag (old pyjamas) and bone for some mysterious items that provoke magical occurrences. The boy enters into a journey through time, the imagination and possibly beyond the boundaries of life. Along the way he interacts with some odd figures from a time guardian who dwells in a bog to characters from his Knockout comic to a summoned cuckoo to a double of himself. Though the primary drive for this story is Joseph's shift in seeing and a quest to prevent magical elements from entering into his dimension, the overall meaning of this fantastical story remains open to interpretation.
In a way I admire how Garner excavates elements from English folklore to entirely refashion them in a tale that seems to literally exist out of time. The novel is unapologetically strewn with antiquated terms, references to items specific to Cheshire, elements from Garner's previous books and entirely invented words. However, those not familiar with any of these things will be quite disorientated throughout much of the novel. Fiction shouldn't necessarily define its terminology and it can be a pleasure using stories as a springboard to learn more about a particular culture and locale. Looking up colloquialisms and vernacular language such as a donkey stone and terms like “shufti” yields a bit more understanding, but I doubt this book will be comprehensible to anyone who doesn't originate from this area of England and hasn't grown up reading Garner's children books. So it's no wonder that some readers have been impatient with it.
Read my full
review of Treacle Walker by Alan Garner at LonesomeReader
