Garner, Alan: Treacle Walker

I don’t envy anyone who has the task of translating this book to other languages. I wouldn’t know where to start with this witches’ brew of the obscure, the colloquial, the archaic and the lost in the dictionary of time.This strange novel has three main characters - Joe, a 20th century boy, who appears to live alone with his catapult, comics, birds’ eggs collection and marbles. Then there is Treacle Walker, an itinerant rag & bone man, who talks in riddles. A third character is an ancient bog man named Thin Amren.“Treacle Walker” has a dreamlike quality, where everything seems to make sense at the time, but on waking feels disjointed and bizarre as it fades. Mid-20th century British comic characters rampage through its pages, juxtaposed with myth and magic. I was interested to read that “Stonehenge Kit the Ancient Brit “ and the comic “Knockout” really existed.I’m not sure I understood everything, but does that matter? The theme is perception, time, reality - or not. Joe’s amblyopia in the real world is “glamourie”, a kind of enchantment where perception of time is altered, in the world of “Treacle Walker.”Overall: eccentric, baffling, hypnotic and daft as a bundle of brushes.