And now for something totally different.
You may know the author Alan Garner from his children’s book ‘The Owl Service’ which was important to several generations and subsequently became a television series. However, there have been very many books since then and Treacle Walker was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize, written as Alan Garner approaches 90, after a writing career that has lasted 67 years.
Treacle Walker is not a children’s book and it is very, very difficult to classify in any way or to commit to any particular genre. It is fantasy I suppose, one that involves the landscape and folklore of the author’s home area in Cheshire, near Alderley Edge, a few miles from Jodrell Bank Observatory. This is relevant as Alan Garner is fascinated by astrophysics, quantum mechanics and theories concerning time.
In Treacle Walker the author employs the local dialect of his locality and this gives the dialogue a rather out of this world quality. I decided it was a cross between Roald Dahl’s BFG, the poetry of ee cummings and the speech of some of Tolkien characters. Very strange but extremely effective. Rather like the writer Kevin Crossley-Holland, Garner is intrigued by the liminal, by boundaries and borders, by crossing places, the in between.
In medieval times, the word ‘treacle’ meant medicine and it soon becomes obvious that the medicine man, the treacle walker’s purpose is to cure the sight of Joe, the main character. The word ‘sight’ used in a wide sense here. We can look without seeing, we can see but not understand.
This strange and engaging story is short, just 150 pages, so it is an easy evening’s read. It is worth it.