A boy living alone in an old house in a valley in the first half of the last century does a deal with a mysterious rag-and-bone man, meets an Iron Age bog man who may be dreaming the world into existence, and is pursued through a mirror-world by characters from a 1940s comic. “If I’ve got anything right,” he says, “I’ve got this right.” It tells a story that’s philosophically complex, riddling and steeped in myth. Yet there are many who regard the 87-year-old as ranking among our country’s greatest living writers.Īnd Treacle Walker may be his finest book – or so he, in his diffident way, seems to think. He has always rejected the former label and says he’s “not entirely happy with” the latter. Garner, best-known as the author of such classics as The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and The Owl Service, has little truck with conventional literary circles – and for most of his career he has been pigeonholed as a children’s writer or, worse, a “fantasy” writer. It will probably have been a surprise to many Booker-watchers, too. But having written it, if other people think it’s worthy of a prize, I’m gratified.” I don’t write the stuff in order to win a prize. “Slight surprise,” he says, with a twitch of whimsy around his mouth. When I ask Alan Garner how he reacted to being longlisted for the Booker Prize at this stage in his 65-year career as a novelist, he takes a moment to choose his words.
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