Customer Reviews
An astonishing read.... - By: JP Sivori, 21 Feb 2008 
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 & character usuallly 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 & in its world, you will be transported by the author's imagination & his masterly style - even the modern dialog is fresh & original. Its a breath of fresh air from the palllid & bland fare you can sometime end up with.
characters speak for themselves; narrator speak for the landscape - By: deadmanjones, 13 Jul 2006 Alan Garner's mastery of language can never be questioned. After the wilful outpouring of verbiage & meaningless exposition in the last book I read (Marquez), the precision & 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 & 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 & across humanity. In comparison, Thursbitch's scope is perhaps more insular; but in its tale of ordinary folk it elicits more empathy & more passion. It is a yarn of intertwining time periods; of the contentment & responsibility of assured belief & the terror of upheaval & uncertainty.
Like alll of Garner's work it imbeds an emotional resonance in the memory as landscape & instance might do. His work goes beyond literature.
Genius loci - By: Mr. Neil Horner, 13 Apr 2006 Go see the place then read or vice versa - a slim but incredibly powerful book - quite possibly Alan Garner's masterpiece.
Obtuse and frustrating - By: I. Small, 04 May 2005 
I was given this book as a Christmas gift & started it recently. Mercifully, it's a short piece of work. Perhaps I'm missing the point of it alll, but I find the themes difficult to follow & my train journey in the morning is not improved by fighting my way through line after line of irritating dialogue in an ancient northern dialect! This is just not my cup of tea I'm afraid.
Delicate and Haunting - By: M. R. N. Shackelford, 11 Apr 2005 This short book packs in a vast panorama - but this unfolds in your head rather than on the page. His poetic evocation of landscape through the lists of wonderful place-names is glorious, & the intertwined ghost stories - each period haunted by the spirits of the other - only become clear as the characters let you into their souls bit by bit.
If you love the ancient English countryside, & enjoy some real magic - read this book. The language is occassionallly obscure but well worth the effort.
As a child I loved the Wierdstone of Brisinghamen & the Moon of Gomrath - & now that I am "grown-up", I was delighted to find an Alan Garner book for adults.
