TREACLE WALKER

Shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize and a Guardian Best Fiction Book of 2021, the novel is a fusion of myth, magic and the stories we make for ourselves. 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. 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. Treacle Walker has magical powers and bestows magical gifts on the boy and a human-like spiritual creature who lives in a bog. Possibly written for young adults in a slightly old-fashioned, comic book style and with many made up words like 'clanjandering'. A slim quick read, 152pp, paperback.