Treacle Walker
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Treacle Walker
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Narrated by:
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Robert Powell
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By:
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Alan Garner
About this listen
Shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize and a Guardian Best Fiction Book of 2021
An introspective young boy, Joseph Coppock squints at the world with his lazy eye. Living alone in an old house, he reads comics, collects birds’ eggs and plays with his marbles. When, one day, a rag-and-bone man called Treacle Walker appears, exchanging an empty jar of a cure-all medicine and a donkey stone for a pair of Joseph's pyjamas and a lamb's shoulder blade, a mysterious friendship develops between them.
A fusion of myth, magic and the stories we make for ourselves, Treacle Walker is an extraordinary novel from one of our greatest living writers.
A NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR • A TLS BOOK OF THE YEAR • A GUARDIAN BEST FICTION BOOK OF 2021
©2021 Alan Garner (P)2021 HarperCollins Publishers LimitedListeners also enjoyed...
Critic reviews
‘Treacle Walker is a small miracle’ New Statesman Best Books of 2021
‘Remarkable … there’s mastery of craft, resonance and deep feeling on every one of these 150 pages.’ Daily Telegraph
‘Spare and allusive … luminous and understated. It’s about seeing and healing; any more by way of summary would be useless’ Rowan Williams, New Statesman
‘It’s a strange, austere, uncompromising book, leagues ahead of anything else I’ve read this year’ Peter Thonemann, TLS
‘This seemingly brief tale is a hypnotic wonder, blurring the boundaries of time and spirit… A glorious wonder in its own right. Here is real magic between hard covers’ Erica Wagner, New Statesmen
‘Treacle Walker is a circular narrative, made of smaller interlocking circles, with actions and whole paragraphs repeating: in its end is its beginning. This late fiction also works the seam opened up in Garner’s very first novel, inspired by the story handed down to his grandfather about enchanted sleepers under Alderley Edge … Playful, moving and wholly remarkable work … There’s a life’s work inside this little book’ Guardian
‘Sparse yet masterful… This is a mesmerising folktale where every word counts’ Literary Review
‘Garner has always suggested that there is essentially just one story, and this novel… contains all the exuberance and eccentricity, all the deep thought and resounding mythology of his best work. At the end of his life, Philip Roth wrote the extraordinary Nemesis, a book that felt like a conversation between the author and his younger self, an attempt to express in a single novel the concerns of a lifetime. Treacle Walker does something similar, cramming [in] … more ideas and imagination than most authors manage in their whole careers’ Observer
What listeners say about Treacle Walker
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 19-11-21
Absolutely
I really enjoy a book that does a lot more than tells a story. This one will engage your mind and make you think, even if you start by categorising it as youth/teenage fiction.
The narrator makes it come alive.
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6 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Glamourpuss
- 11-11-22
Strange and Mesmerising
Wasn’t sure what to expect. I hadn’t read any Alan Garner since I was at school (a long time ago!) but this had me from the first. I found the language of Treacle Walker so strange and beautiful - it mesmerised me. Loved every minute and beautifully performed by Robert Powell. He made the characters really come alive. Fabulous. I will listen again. I’m sure there will be things I missed the first time.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Clive roberts
- 03-12-22
Four stars for now
I like Treacle Walker; it feels like a breath of fresh air in what is beginning to feel like just more of the same old same from the literary world. I thought the narration was very well done, also. I have given it four stars for now, simply because I need to listen to it again to peel away the story's layers.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Teddy_Ed
- 23-12-22
Confusing for my small brain
Beautifully written, clever and confusing. I got lost, very lost, but it was well read and I enjoyed listening to it. Maybe I’ll try again when I’ve grown some more brain cells. Or maybe I won’t
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Geraldine Canniford
- 21-10-22
A magical read.
I listened to this wonderful book with a smile, all the way through.
It took me to many places especially to Yorkshire and my Grandparents.
I will buy the book to read at will
Thank you for your magical I’m agitation and poetic use of words.
Geraldine
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 27-04-22
Late Garner unexpected
Robert Powell reads this short fable superbly. In one way it is about the relationship between an old rag-and-bone man and a boy who is Ill but like most of Garner it is also about the nature of reality. It is full of riddles and gnomic sayings. The boy has the glamourie, he can see what isn’t literally there with one eye. He can converse with a bog-body who has roused from the Neolithic and can enter the world of his comic, Knockout. This is recommended for all who enjoy the world of Alan Garner. It is a beautiful spare narrative,
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7 people found this helpful
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story3 out of 5 stars
- Ms. K. Suttill
- 23-01-23
Interesting but not my usual listen
This was an interesting book but not what I’d usually read. I struggled so picture the characters and their place in time/location but maybe that was the point.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Jademg
- 23-05-23
A wonderful story, brilliantly narrated
A wonderful story, brilliantly narrated
I’ve seen a lot of reviews saying they couldn’t follow the story, I would suggest allowing yourself to get lost and just flow along with it.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- A P Harris
- 30-07-22
Beautiful words, beautifully read
Although this story contains many complex words and sentences it's rhythms, it's heart, its songs are wonderfully simple.
I know of very few writers who's words are so entrapping and engaging as Garners. This book is as fresh today as when it was written and is like nothing else.
Nothing else that is than another Garner novel, here beautiful read by Robert Powell. An absolute classic.
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Ebray
- 07-09-22
Can’t wait to listen again
What an intriguing and mystifying story, Full of depth, riddle and meaning in such simple dialogues, full of beautiful dialect. It is enchanting.
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3 people found this helpful