Treacle Walker

by Alan Garner

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Book cover for Treacle Walker

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‘Playful, moving and wholly remarkable’ Guardian ‘A small miracle’ New Statesman ‘Mastery of craft, resonance and deep feeling on every page’ Telegraph

Treacle Walker is a stunning fusion of myth and folklore and an exploration of the fluidity time, vivid storytelling that illuminates an introspective young mind trying to make sense of everything around him.

‘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.

‘All the exuberance and eccentricity, all the deep thought and resounding mythology of [Garner’s] best work’ Observer

‘Spare and allusive… luminous and understated’ Rowan Williams, New Statesman

‘Cryptic, evocative, sparely told and deceptively simple’ Carolyne Larrington, TLS

A NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR • A TLS BOOK OF THE YEARA GUARDIAN BEST FICTION BOOK OF 2021

  • ISBN13 9780008477790
  • Publish Date 28 October 2021
  • Publish Status Out of Print
  • Out of Print 26 January 2023
  • Publish Country GB
  • Publisher HarperCollins Publishers
  • Imprint Fourth Estate Ltd