Customer Reviews

Thursbitch

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OK, Alan Garner is a law unto himself - not easy to relate to any specific tradition or genre. But while everyone praises his amazing craftsmanship as a writer of superbly elliptical prose, and marvels at the vivid invocation of far times and places, I sometimes wonder why he is never seen in the tradition of British writers of the supernatural?

For when you come down to it, almost all his books rely deeply on faults in time and/or space: we have the walking stones, the mystical communion across oceans (Strandloper), the phantasmal reappearance of figures across time...But in what line of descent could we put him? The strong sensitivity to place, most clearly expressed in "Thursbitch" with Sally's term "sentient landscape" might link him to Algernon Blackwood: but Blackwood's indulgent, discursive style is almost the opposite of Garner's. M.R.James comes closer, but James is more explicitly devoted to raising the hackles on your spine, while Garner lets it sneak up on you unexpectedly as you realize what just happened.

Anyway, be that as it may - what about Thursbitch? What is it "about?"

It's a story of interlinked lives. One is that of Jack, the "jagger". the roving man in 1736 who is more than a salt-carrier: in the ancient rural society of north-west England he is what can only be described as a shaman, a figure of power. It is a world still full of pagan belief, where the Bull, the stars, bees, and honey are all linked... echoes of "out of the strong came forth sweetness," and of the shaman becoming the totem animal: there are the hallucinatory fungi (known to the people as "corbel bread"). There are sacred places, there are the standing stones that mark the way along the ridge tops but do much more...Jack sees the indentations in the ground where they left their places to drink at the stream, his horses shy at one when it looms up out of the driving snow.

The other lives are of the present day: Sally, a woman who knows all there is to know about geology and the history of the land over millennia, but who is the victim of a rapidly crippling disease: and her companion, the saintly Ian, who seems to be both priest and doctor - he went to a seminary but took the "hippocritic" oath. As they walk the Cheshire hillsides - in Sally's case with much difficulty - they come increasingly under the spell of the historic landscape, and the veil of time parts so that they see Jagger and his packtrain and are under the slope when they hear his awful cry as his wife Nan Sarah dies in childbirth. Likewise, Jack sees two people up on the ridge...and later passes Ian when Ian is walking away from a tragic moment.

Jack goes astray and becomes a ranting preacher of doom - one can't help comparing his sermon on the terrors of Hell with James Joyce's, both real tours de force - but is rescued back to "himself" by the sting of a bee. The bee is a sacramental creature that is featured many times, singly, or in a swarm, or as a star cluster.

So much depth - and I haven't mentioned the sacred spring, or the snakes, or the tradition of drinking the shaman's "piddlejuice" that has traces of the hallucinogenics in it, or the farmpeople's songs with Greek choruses... Yes, you will have to read it. Oh, by the way, there are dozens of words you won't know, unless you are a really deep student of English folklore and country ways....some can be found readily, others you guess from context. Please don't let that hold you back. They add so much to the richness and immediacy of the setting.

A totally amazing work.

Yes, the dialog and dialect make this book hard going at times. A glossary would have been invaluable, along with some historical notes.

But it's worth it. The sweep and scope, the prose and language are all done by a master wordsmith.

It's hard for me to say exactly what this book is about, except that there's two stories here, intertwining but rarely in contact.

I haven't read Thursbitch, but I have read every other one of Alan Garner's books, over and over, from the time I was 10 until yesterday (at 55). The previous reviewer compares this book to The Stone Book Quartet, neither of which he could finish (and I imagine he'd be even less keen on the dazzling short novel for adults, Strandloper). I just came to Amazon to look for copies of The Stone Book Quartet as gifts to my two oldest friends. It's one of the most beautiful books I've ever read. Almost single-handedly Garner maintains the value and beauty of the well-made thing--his books are well-made like bells or violins, like a good table or bed. And Stone Book Quartet is about the deep magic of such things, made of stone and wood and fibre, and of the craft-magicians who make them. So I'm ordering Thursbitch right now!

Alan Garner has won almost every literary prize, and received an OBE for literature, yet I couldn't settle down with one of his books. His dialogue is hard going, with local dialect confusing. Chopped sentences with scenes switching with no warning. I tried both Thursbitch and the Stone Book Quartet (the better of the two) but finished neither.