Treacle Walker (2022)
Why this one?
I’m currently making my way through the 2022 Booker Shortlist.
Treacle Walker is the second extremely short novel on this year’s shortlist, with more pages than Small Things Like These but fewer words. It’s by Alan Garner (1934- ; active 1960- ) who becomes the older ever nominee for the Prize at the age of 87. Born in Congleton, Cheshire, England, he studied at Manchester Grammar School and briefly at Oxford University, where he dropped out of his Classics degree to focus on novel-writing.
Growing up in Alderley Edge, an affluent suburb of Manchester, where his family had lived for generations, he was told folk tales and absorbed their myths and symbolism, incorporating it in much of his writing. His first novels, the fantasies The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960) and its sequel The Moon of Gomrath (1963) draw heavily on this tradition.
He experienced commercial success early in his career, and followed up with critical acclaim for the likes of The Owl Service (1967) and Red Shift (1973), novels which provoked ongoing debate as to whether he was a “children’s writer”, given his subject matter was often childhood and yet his writing is indisputably more complex than typical children’s fiction.
Treacle Walker marks his first ever Booker nomination, though he has won numerous other awards - typically in children’s fiction categories. His work has been publicly admired by authors across the spectrum from Philip Pulman to Margaret Atwood.
Thoughts, etc.
Treacle Walker is a short and highly distinctive novel. In it, a young boy call Joseph Coppock, in recovery from illness and suffering from a lazy eye, has an encounter with the titular rag-and-bone man, with whom he makes a trade of his dirty pyjamas and an old lamb bone, receiving in return an empty jar of medicine and a donkey stone. In its few pages, Joseph encounters a naked ‘bog man’ named Thin Amren, sees characters from his Knockout comic leap off the page and join him in a reality-bending adventure involving mirrors and marbles, communes with cuckoos and learns via a visit to an optician that he sees different realities through his good and bad eyes.
This is probably the most difficult book to write about since I started this blog. It defies straightforward summaries of plot and analysing its themes is a major challenge too. I found a lot to enjoy in it: the sense of childlike wonder at the possibility of “magic” and events beyond our comprehension is brilliantly conveyed. The use of dialect also grabbed me - while Garner grew up on the “wrong side of the Pennines” the language felt evocative to me as someone who grew up in at least a vaguely similar part of the world. There are moments of humour, a sense of playfulness and fun, and a deeply evocative ambience. Essentially, if you just run with this book, and let it carry you along with its language and mood, it’s a richly rewarding experience.
Trying to dig deeper, I found myself a little flummoxed. Garner maintains that he’s not out to confuse with his writing, just to tell stories in their simplest form. Others have noted that to fully get into Treacle Walker you need at least a degree of familiarity with Garner’s previous work - unfortunately I’m lacking in that department, so struggled a little with the sense-making in general, particularly in terms of the mythic and folklore-derived allusions that are clearly so integral.
What I did grasp and find interesting was the parallels with Garner’s own childhood, during which he suffered several serious illnesses and subsequent periods of solitary convalescence. Joseph’s world - seemingly lacking in any adult presence, dominated by the fantasy worlds of comic books, and making the most of whatever nuggets of contact with the outside world come his way - thus begins to make more sense. I sort of enjoyed taking a “Joseph-eye-view” through the novel - he’s fascinated by Treacle and the fantasy worlds he leads him too, and yet finds many of his deeper-sounding pronouncements “daft” - ignoring them and carrying on regardless.
Ultimately it’s an intriguing window into the world of a hugely influential and masterful author in his later years. It’s easy to see why his work has confounded generations of readers in terms of categorisation - if this is anything to go by, the layers are many and deep, and readings as either a wild childhood adventure, or a richly allusive tale of time and mythology, both seem to be equally valid.
Score
7.5
Near-impossible to score due to how different it is from virtually everything else I’ve reviewed on here. In the end I’d say it’s a wonderful thing to have on the shortlist, unique and rather special, if a little difficult to really get a handle on. Were it to win, I feel confident in saying it would be the strangest winner to date.
Next up
I finally managed to get hold of a copy of the apparently very much in-demand The Trees…
