Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #62723 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Stephen Howe, Independent
...the experience of reading is so overwhelming that, after closing the book, it remains more real than anything around one.

Clare Alfree, Metro
A rare flight of the imagination - and an unforgettable book

James Urqhart, FT
Magnificent

Customer Reviews

An astonishing read....
Once a year maybe, if you're lucky, you come across a book that takes you somewhere you've never been before. That's what I read books for anyhow. A combination of story, language and character usually does the trick. Thursbitch is a gem. Yes, it took a few pages to atune myself to the language of 18th Century Cheshire but the same thing happened 15 years ago when I first read White Jazz - then it was 1950s Los Angeles crime slang. Once you are on the book's wavelength and in its world, you will be transported by the author's imagination and his masterly style - even the modern dialog is fresh and original. Its a breath of fresh air from the pallid and bland fare you can sometime end up with.

characters speak for themselves; narrator speak for the landscape
Alan Garner's mastery of language can never be questioned. After the wilful outpouring of verbiage and meaningless exposition in the last book I read (Marquez), the precision and brevity of Garner's writing was the return of a welcome friend. His method of letting characters speak for themselves whilst letting the narrator speak for the landscape remains both a joy and an inspiration.
His last novel, Strandloper, offered us one of the few twentieth century instances of originality in the narrative form. Its scope was writ large; across the globe, across history and across humanity. In comparison, Thursbitch's scope is perhaps more insular; but in its tale of ordinary folk it elicits more empathy and more passion. It is a yarn of intertwining time periods; of the contentment and responsibility of assured belief and the terror of upheaval and uncertainty.
Like all of Garner's work it imbeds an emotional resonance in the memory as landscape and instance might do. His work goes beyond literature.

Genius loci
Go see the place then read or vice versa - a slim but incredibly powerful book - quite possibly Alan Garner's masterpiece.