Tag: Alan Garner

Treacle Walker

by Derelict Space Sheep on June 25, 2023 in 42 Word Reviews • 0 Comments

Treacle Walker

by Alan Garner (HarperCollins, 2021)

audiobook read by Robert Powell (Fourth Estate, 2021)

A slim, much-hyped novel, marketed as adult fantasy and shortlisted for the Booker Prize but actually an untethered middle-grade story where Garner’s personified childhood memories have a fever dream and repeatedly call a rag-and-bone man ‘daft’ (Garner’s pot calling Garner’s kettle black).

The Weirdstone of Brisingamen

by Derelict Space Sheep on March 28, 2023 in 42 Word Retrospectives • 0 Comments

The Weirdstone of Brisingamen

by Alan Garner (William Collins, 1960)

audiobook read by Philip Madoc (Naxos, 2007)

A dour quest fantasy for children, lent solemnity (if not consequence) by its very real sense of landscape—rural Cheshire—and in the audiobook by Philip Madoc’s Welsh inflections and portentous, almost reverent reading. Though trials are faced, nothing much actually happens.