Playful, moving and wholly remarkableGuardianA small miracleNew StatesmanMastery of craft, resonance and deep feeling on every pageTelegraphAn introspective young boy, Joseph Coppock squints at the world with his lazy eye. Living alone in an old house, he reads comics, collects birdseggs and plays with his marbles. When, 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.A fusion of myth, magic and the stories we make for ourselves, Treacle Walker is an extraordinary novel from one of our greatest living writers.All the exuberance and eccentricity, all the deep thought and resounding mythology of [Garners] best workObserverSpare and allusiveluminous and understatedRowan Williams, New StatesmanCryptic, evocative, sparely told and deceptively simpleCarolyne Larrington, TLSA NEW STATESM