Review: Alan Garner's "Treacle Walker"

[x_los]

I read Alan Garner’s Treacle Walker, and would chiefly describe it as ‘very Garner’. I think the dialogue fares extremely well in an audiobook format (which may be its best, truest realisation), though the strangling economy of Garner’s prose makes this book quite tough to follow while one’s doing any other work. I suspect my comprehension went a bit slippy on some of the prose passages, even though I was trying to be assiduous about it. 

Treacle Walker made me think about the degree of handholding I expect or want from a text (something I have cause to consider all the time in regards to cnovel translation). Garner’s butch insistence that absolutely no explication is ever necessary has me stumbling over incredibly basic questions--like when, in the course of the narrative, did the protagonist (one of those fantasy novel children whose parents obligingly remain out of frame for the duration) die, and what exactly did him in? Garner is not going to help me, there.

The most salient thing I can do is direct you towards Maureen K Speller’s thoughtful write-up on the book at Strange Horizons.