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. It dropped to the ground and ruckled over the floor bricks; then up to the joists and beams of the ceiling; hung, fell, humped. It shrieked, reared against the chimney opening, but did not enter. It surged through the house by cracks and gaps in the timbers, out under the eaves. There was a whispering, silence, and on the floor snow melted to tears.
“My name,” said the man, “is Treacle Walker.”
Other reviewers can tell of how Treacle Walker is the capstone to author Alan Garner’s career — others do explain how this interplays with Garner’s children’s books and carves its place in the history of English folklore — but I haven’t read Garner before, I am not particularly knowledgeable about English folklore, and taken as a standalone artefact, this read was pleasantly weird, but made no deep impression on me. I am glad to have picked this up — I was completely entranced for the short while this took to read and would not speak against the reading experience — but there was no payoff for me in the end. From my own limited perspective, not a Booker winner.
“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.”
Young Joe Coppock has a lazy eye and a collection of eggs and a pocketful of marbles, and when from his bed by the chimneypiece he hears the call of rag and bone for donkeystone, he scrambles out to the yard with some old pyjamas and a lamb’s shoulder, meeting Treacle Walker for the first time. They make an exchange (Joe chooses a cracked and crazed old jar and the promised donkeystone [an embossed brick used for polishing stone steps]), and Joe accidentally unleashes magic upon himself (the jar contains paste that charms his weaker eye and the donkeystone enchants his doorway), and strange events ensue. There’s something otherworldly and othertimely about the narrative and it’s unclear whether the events are even happening in our known world (Is Joe dead and in some kind of limbo, are these characters from a fairytale where magic exists, or is Joe merely an actor in Thin Amren’s dream?). And with language that bordered on the Jabberwockyish, there was an off-kilter vibe that I enjoyed in the moment — I definitely wanted to know what was going to happen — but again, it didn’t seem to go anywhere.
“You have the glamourie,” said the man. “In just the one. And that’s no bad thing, if you have the knowing. She’ll be the governor while you learn the hang of it, and when you’ve got that you’ll be fine as filliloo. But you need the both of them. What sees is seen.”
Much of what Garner writes about is from real life — from the donkeystones to old comic strip characters that come to life — but while I was a big fan of Max Porter’s Booker-nominated Lanny (which similarly pitted a youngster against a character from traditional English folklore), there was no foothold in reality with Treacle Walker, and as a result, I felt no stakes for Joe Coppock: he could summon the cuckoo with a bone flute and follow it through the Chesire bogs with his glamourie ‘til the Brit Basher caught Stonehenge Kit, and none of it made my heart race. A fine and pleasurable reading experience, but it doesn’t add up to much (for me) in the end.
The 2022 Booker Shortlist
The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka (the winner)
Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout
The Trees by Percival Everett
Treacle Walker by Alan Garner
Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
I found I didn't really have the interest to read the rest of this year's longlist, but I did read:
The Colony by Audrey Magee (my favourite overall)
After Sappho by Naomi Alderman
Nightcrawling by Lelia Mottley
