"Treacle Walker" by Alan Garner

Fantasy and mythology are generally not my reading genres of choice (although there have been occasional exceptions).  When I first heard Simon at Footnotes and Tangents raving about "Treacle Walker" by Alan Garner, I checked it out, but concluded that it did not interest me.  

Then Simon announced that "Treacle Walker" would be one of the books we covered in a "slow readalong" in 2026.  I didn't think I was going to participate... but I'm behind pace on my Goodreads goals, it's a short book (160 pages) and our readalong would cover just three weeks.  And, having completed several readalongs with Simon over the past three years now -- including some I initially had my doubts about -- I knew his explanatory "footnotes and tangents" posts frequently add a lot to my enjoyment and understanding of a book. So I decided to give it a try.  

I'd never heard of Alan Garner, but apparently he's a well-known author, "best known for his children's fantasy novels and his retellings of traditional British folk tales. (He's 91 years old!)   

"Treacle Walker" was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize. It could easily be taken for a children's novel (there were some distinctly Dr. Seuss-ian cadences to the language in it -- also a lot that was reminiscent of Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland") -- but I suspect there's a lot in it that children would not understand. (Heck, there's a lot in there that *I* didn't understand...!) It's about young Joseph Coppock, who lives in an old house in the English countryside (seemingly alone). He's being treated for "lazy eye" and wears an eyepatch. One day, he meets a mysterious "rag and bone man" named Treacle Walker, and strange things start happening.... 

Perhaps it helps to be British (and maybe even from the particular area of Britain where Garner is from?) but a lot of the language/terminology and cultural references went straight over my head. (I'd never heard of "rag and bone men," or "donkey stones," for example, but many of the Brits in the group had.)  Adding to my befuddlement, some of the words appeared to be slang, or completely made up.  Simon's explanations helped some, but a lot of the finer points and greater meaning of this book still completely escaped me. 

If you're into fantasy/mythology/folklore, you might enjoy this one. I appreciated the quality of the writing -- but I will admit, I found it all a little bizarre. Perhaps it's one of those books that becomes clearer upon a second reading... but I'm not sure I'm tempted to give it another try.  

After some internal debate, I will rate this one 2.5 stars on StoryGraph, rounded up to 3 stars on Goodreads.

This was Book #16 read to date in 2026 (and Book #2 finished in July), bringing me to 40% of  my 2026 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 40 books. I am (for the moment, anyway...!) 6 books behind pace to meet my goal.  :(  You can find reviews of all my books read to date in 2026 tagged as "2026 books."