Thursbitch by Garner, Alan (2004) Paperback

by Alan Garner

In this visionary fable, John Turner’s death in the 18th century leaves an emotional charge for Ian and Sal in the 20th, which deeply affects their relationship, challenging the perceptions they have of themselves and of each other.

Genres: Fiction, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Historical, Mythology, British Literature, Contemporary

Paperback

First published October 2, 2003

About the author

Alan Garner OBE (born 17 October 1934) is an English novelist who is best known for his children's fantasy novels and his retellings of traditional British folk tales. His work is firmly rooted in the landscape, history and folklore of his native county of Cheshire, North West England, being set in the region and making use of the native Cheshire dialect.

Born into a working-class family in Congleton, Cheshire, Garner grew up around the nearby town of Alderley Edge, and spent much of his youth in the wooded area known locally as 'The Edge', where he gained an early interest in the folklore of the region. Studying at Manchester Grammar School and then Oxford University, in 1957 he moved to the nearby village of Blackden, where he bought and renovated an Early Modern building known as Toad Hall. His first novel, The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, was published in 1960. A children's fantasy novel set on the Edge, it incorporated elements of local folklore in its plot and characters. Garner completed a sequel, The Moon of Gomrath (1963), but left the third book of the trilogy he had envisioned. Instead he produced a string of further fantasy novels, Elidor (1965), The Owl Service (1967) and Red Shift (1973).

Turning away from fantasy as a genre, Garner produced The Stone Book Quartet (1979), a series of four short novellas detailing a day in the life of four generations of his family. He also published a series of British folk tales which he had rewritten in a series of books entitled Alan Garner's Fairy Tales of Gold (1979), Alan Garner's Book of British Fairy Tales (1984) and A Bag of Moonshine (1986). In his subsequent novels, Strandloper (1996) and Thursbitch (2003), he continued writing tales revolving around Cheshire, although without the fantasy elements which had characterised his earlier work. In 2012, he finally published a third book in the Weirdstone trilogy.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Garner

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Rod · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some 60 years ago while running near the valley of Thursbitch in Cheshire, the author, Alan Garner, stumbled across a memorial stone with an enigmatic inscription:

HERE JOHN TUR
NER WAS CAST
AWAY IN A HEAVY
SNOW STORM IN
THE NIGHT IN OR
ABOUT THE YEAR
1755

And on the obverse side:

THE PRINT OF A
WOMANS SHOE WAS
FOUND BY HIS SIDE
IN THE SNOW WHERE
HE LAY DEAD

Haunted by the memorial stone, and by the uncanny atmosphere of the tracks and valleys of Cheshire, Garner did research and talked to local historians in order to find out more about the story behind it. Thursbitch is Garner's attempt to draw the known elements of the story into a novel, and an excellent novel it is.

Exploring Garner's favorite themes, past events and people encroaching upon those of the present, and vice/versa, and the seeming sentience of rural English landscapes, which are imbued with the spirits and boggarts of a pagan England that has never entirely faded, Thursbitch alternates between the stories of John Turner and his family in the 18th century, and Ian and Sal, two academics in the 21st century who are drawn back again and again to the same valleys traversed by John Turner. The 18th-century dialogue makes use of archaic Cheshire dialect, the accuracy of which I can't vouch for, but it certain seems authentic. I love books written in this fashion (see reviews for Riddley Walker, The Cloister and the Hearth, and The Wake), so the added bit of difficulty in parsing the dialogue and having to check an online dictionary (and sometimes more than one) only made the reading more fun for me.

If you're familiar with Red Shift or others of Garner's later works that aren't expressly for children, you know that Garner's storytelling is very elliptical, and he doesn't help you out very much, if at all. A healthy background knowledge in mythology is helpful, as well as an ear for language, and let us say a certain etymological sense, but I wouldn't characterize it as a difficult work. Garner's difficulty (if you want to term it that), is not one of loop-de-loop sentence structures or fragmented phraseology, but one of connections—between the characters and events in different eras, and between the reader and the author himself—and most of the connections are felt intuitively rather than "understood." I certainly feel that I fell short somewhat in making these connections, but undoubtedly future readings will allow further sympathetic insights into this enigmatic novel. It's a powerful, multilayered work that draws the reader into its mythopoetic spell. Highly recommended.

[Shovelmonkey1 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was very unsure about this book when I first started reading it - this can partly be blamed on the fact that I am a lazy monkey who bothered to read neither the blurb on the back of the book or the note in the 1001 books to read before you die list which explains why it is on said list in the first place. Initially the unexpected batting back and forward time echoes narrative was difficult to get my eyes around however, once I'd reconciled myself to the two very different styles of narrative I found this book to be absolutely brilliant. Ironically it was the local Derbyshire dialect narrative that I started off liking the least but this was the one I came to enjoy the most as the story progressed.

This is a story of two seperate events taking place in the same landscape but the sheer power of the land blurs the boundaries between the past and the present and effectively forms a bridge that only two of the characters are certain they are experiencing. The descriptions of the landscape are fantastic and the powerful descriptions of the land as perceived by people who know it so well that every hollow way, nook, gully, stream and brow have their own names and represent elements of old times, old gods and older beliefs make the story very compelling. The spiritual and physical connection to the land is something that we have lost today. We can no longer read or understand our landscape in the same way, we move through it but we do not feel it or listen to what the land is telling us. This book is a stark reminder of pagan gods and old ways and I loved it!

[Kristen McDermott · Rating 5 out of 5]

A winter gem from the greatest living master of the mythopoeic. Time, place, stone, sense, and language are set into a spiral dance that transports the reader utterly. All of Garner's novels are rooted in the urge to know a place so deeply that every fragment of it evokes a dream, every object becomes multiplied and reflected through time and space. No one else takes the connection between land, lore, and language further and deeper. Every aspiring (or working) writer should read Garner to see how it can be done.

[Kevan Manwaring · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alan Garner's new novel has been a long time coming, but like the slow processes of geology, folk memory and love, it has produced something distinctive and enduring. Thursbitch is based on a true place and a true tale of discovery: once, when fell-running as a younger man, Garner stumbled upon a stone in a Pennine track in Cheshire with this curious inscription:

HERE JOHN TURNER WAS CAST AWAY IN A HEAVY SNOW STORM IN THE NIGHT IN OR ABOUT THE YEAR 1755 - THE PRINT OF A WOMAN'S SHOE WAS FOUND BY HIS SIDE IN THE SNOW WHERE HE LAY DEAD

Garner has extrapolated ingeniously upon this enigma - bringing the live of John Turner: jagger - a leader of horses - salt-trader, and local medicine man. The dark story was largely inspired by Garner's own experience of researching the area: finding hidden valleys, mysterious stones and knowing farmers. It is a detective story across time as the events leading up to Turner's death are revealed; in parallel with the rediscovery of the mystery by an ageing couple of the present, Ian and Sally, a priest-doctor and a geologist with a debilitating disease, probably Alzheimer's. The portrayal of this odd couple, intellectual, cantankerous and growing old disgracefully is both touching and tough; unsentimental in its depiction of the decay of the body and the mind. Sally is drawn to the mystery of Thursbitch as she approaches her inevitable end.

The characters of both centuries are portrayed almost purely through dialogue - realistic, if infuriating in its use of jargon or dialect. Ian and Sally's conversation are as gnomic as the Colloquy of the Sages. Garner has caught the Cheshire tongue accurately, if exhaustingly. Like all slang, it alienates the outsider. The reaction to ramblers by Ian and Sal, if funny at times, is similar to the insular community of Thursbitch: "you're not from round here", in other words. It is a singular place, rendered vividly, and if nothing else makes one wonder what other mysteries are hidden amongst the villages and valleys of this land.

Garner has an eye for the mythic in the familiar, and here the Old Gods make their presence felt - both the Northern and Mediterranean variety. Thursbitch tells the tale of the Thunderer and his wife, on a human level. It depicts in uncompromising and unapologetic frankness the practise of Paganism by a whole community - The Wicker Man without Edward Woodward! Here, in a Pennine Valley is a remnant of an ancient cult: Minoan or Mithraic, mixed with the Norse. The lovers of Brisingamen's heathen pantheon will not be disappointed.

Yet this is a very adult tale, about growing old, the search for knowledge, the nature of time, the hardship of life and the mystery of death. A tale for the winter years. The stark clipped language offers no easy answers. It's as though Garner has taken the edict of the Northern poet Basil Bunting's advice in Briggflatt: "Words are too light, take a chisel to write". There is a hard poetry about the diction, like the Pennine landscape: an unyielding, austere beauty. It takes a while for the ear to attune to this strange music, yet it is worth the effort. For Thursbitch is the real thing: a glimmer of a mystery immanent in the mundane, with salt of the earth people interfacing with the divine among the ruins of time.

[Jim Coughenour · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a strange difficult book. The language reminds me of the poetry of Geoffrey Hill – archaic, massively learned, taut with power – but sometimes it's like chewing stones. The story is even harder, set in the "sentient landscape" of an actual, desolate valley in the north of England. Garner's prose is haunted and disturbed. Two times and tales interweave with uncanny effect: the story of a 18th century jagger, a peddler who perishes on a snowy night in the first few pages – and a querulous 21st century scientist dying from a degenerative disease.

If this is genre writing, it's a genre specific to Britain. I thought of the great novels of John Cowper Powys (especially Wolf Solent), of Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising quintet and of the "supernatural thrillers" of Charles Williams – books in which the primordial energies of ancient Britain erupt into contemporary consciousness. It's a force Garner takes quite seriously – and for anyone attempting this novel, his lecture The Valley of the Demon is essential reading. You can't help but be impressed by his impressions. I just wish I'd liked it more. The book gave me a headache. It will be a relief to return to Ulysses.

[Ari Berk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mythic and extraordinary in every way. This is a book for those who love language and who are looking to better understand the ways in which events inhere within landscape. A fascinating and gripping tale as well showing how time becomes something far more flexible than we ever imagined. Some actions, once lived, live on forever.

[KA · Rating 5 out of 5]

I put this on my "Indigenous" shelf because more than any other book I've read, this one imagines an English indigeneity - and the forces that try to uproot it - best. A strange and haunting novel that I can already tell will require many re-readings.

[Nick Swarbrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

It has occasioned a life-changing weekend, a load of deep research, a series of nightmares, and a number of re-reads. I can't begin to review Thursbitch - except, perhaps, to warn anyone wanting to read it that it is the pinnacle of Alan Garner's terse, dialogue-led narrative style and as such (moving between Peak District dialect and C21st, almost Pinteresque, discussion of human life and sentient landscape) needs the reader to keep their wits about them. A bit like a trip to the valley where the book is set... but that's another story, https://nicktomjoestory.news.blog/res... and not really a book review.

[Justin Howe · Rating 5 out of 5]

A somewhat stunning read that makes me wonder if a book can be simultaneously lean and dense? The themes are reminiscent of Algernon Blackwood being not quite horror so much as awe and wonder at the world, but the prose is utterly stripped down and sparse. To be honest I had to stop a third of the way into the book and restart it in order to catch hold of what was going on. Definitely recommended.

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Garner is known for writing strange, elliptical novels, and this is one of his strangest. Set almost entirely in the valley of Thursbitch, it conjures the wild landscape of the tors and gullies, and the ways in which past and present write themselves on the landscape. There are two interweaving strands: the story of John Turner, an 18th century inhabitant of Thursbitch, who is a wanderer, a merchant, but is always drawn back to his home. He is also something of a shaman or wise man, gathering mushrooms to create hallucinations, and tending to the gods of the valley. We also meet Ian and Sal, two 21st century visitors to Thursbitch, who are drawn to the valley's isolation and wildness, and notice the same beauty and strangeness that John Turner has seen nearly three hundred years previously. In typical Garner style, we are given very few explanations, no exploration of the interior life of the characters, and he helps the reader very little: instead, we are given dialogue and clear, precise details of landscape, especially geological features. There's something very compelling about this: the language is carefully constructed and meaty, giving the reader a lot to think about, but its spareness means that the story never becomes too dense. The emotions are present, beneath the surface, even if never directly described. Overall, I found rereading this book rewarding: I like Garner's sense of the numinous, and the ways in which he watches landscape. The central idea of John Turner giving himself to the old gods of the valley in order to preserve it from harm, is beautiful and believable. There are some odd notes here -- particularly Turner's conversion to Christianity and his rapid turn from it -- and the 18th century world feels much more vivid to me than the 21st century narrative, but it's a book that remains in the imagination. I always return to Garner because he is so much himself: no one else writes like this.

[Mike Niewodowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://my1001bookodyssey.com/2013/08/...

“Early Monday morning, late on Saturday night, I saw ten thousand mile away a house just out of sight!

The floor was on the ceiling, the front was at the back; It stood alone between two more, And the walls were whitewashed black!”

-From Thursbitch



To be honest, I was completely lost while reading Thursbitch. The novel is an enigmatic riddle, and the language is intentionally dense and confusing. The valley of Thursbitch in Northern England seems to be a mystical place in which the characters of the novel also lose themselves.

At least half the novel follows the story of Jack Turner, a jagger (salt vendor) in the late 1700s. He leads a cult-like religious ceremony that involves hallucinations that may or may not be due to his mushrooms (I think). Jack invokes a mystical bull from the heavens that inhabits his body during the ceremony, and the men and women attending the ceremony tear at his body, nearly killing him; Jack recovers by drinking his own urine (I think). Besides the ceremony, Jack does inexplicable things like carrying a carved stone head from a cave in the valley to his home; consider the following passage for a glimpse into the language and mystery- Jack (carrying and speaking to the stone head): “Now then, old Crom. How hast tha been this journey? Did the light hurt thine een? Never fret. It’s done; while next time. We shall burn bonny fires for thee. And Jenkin shall hold stars right running…Eh dear. We must look a pair, you and me. But did you see at all your land and did we mind us ways? I’ll take you down and put you in your bed, as soon as stones have done supping at the brook. We don’t want to be trod on by them great lummoxes. Hush now.” p. 74. Later, Jack becomes a fire-and-brimstone Christian pastor, preaching to the people of the valley of Thursbitch (I think). He dies, frozen to death, next to a single female footprint.

Like I said, I was lost while reading the book.

Sometimes it’s fun to be lost, though. I lived in London, England for a year when I was in my early twenties. I would often get intentionally lost in the city and attempt to find my way home. The streets of London seem like someone had a perfect grid and then took an egg scrambler to it and added a couple cans of alphabet soup. They don’t sell maps of the city; rather they have A-Z (pronounced A to Zed) books with page after page of maps referencing the names of the streets in the index. After a night out or on a slow afternoon, I would take the tube or a bus to a far away part of the city I had never visited and wander my way to familiarity. I guess I felt like I had something to prove.

Meanwhile, in Thursbitch, in modern times, a woman, Sal (short for Sally), finds her only solace in the valley of Thursbitch. She is dying of a degenerative disease that causes her to lose her memories; she is becoming ‘lost’ in time. The valley is the only place her memories seem to ‘stick’. She also seems to have some preternatural connection to Jack from the 1700’s Thursbitch valley (I think).

The valley of Thursbitch plays a large a part in the novel; in fact, it is even more important than the characters.

I understand how important landscapes can be to a story. I once visited Venice, Italy with my family (again, in my twenties). One day, an incredibly thick fog rolled in over the city from the Adriatic Sea. While my family stayed in the hotel wishing for a sunnier day, I went exploring. Most tourists who visit Venice never stray far from the Rialto or the Piazza San Marco; I intentionally got lost in the depths of the narrow meandering pathways. The memory of that walk is vivid: as I could barely see more than a few feet ahead of me for the fog, every few steps brought something new. Ancient buildings on both sides suddenly gave way to modern apartments. I reached many a dead end- either blocked by a building or one of the ubiquitous canals. Lushly carved bridges sprung up abruptly; one led into a grove of olive trees. I passed fishermen in their noisy boats coming and going on the larger canals, and on smaller ones gondolas would slip past silently into the mist. I turned one corner and found myself walking behind a beautiful Italian lady. She glanced behind her then slightly quickened her pace, while I self-consciously slowed my pace so as not to seem like a stalker. She disappeared into the fog long before the sound of her heels clicking against the stone walkway faded away. All the while, the water lapped gently against the stones of the tiny islands, buildings, and passageways.

There are places in this world in which the individual loses his sense of self in the infinite. My experiences in London and Venice reflect this truth. In Thursbitch, the valley is such a place.

I mentioned that I was lost while reading this book. That is not a complaint; in fact I thoroughly enjoyed the confusion and space cadet glow. How wonderful, sometimes, to be intentionally lost!

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

This whole novel is poetic. The pagan sections are full of song and dance and ritualistic incantation, with sentences long and winding or short and repetitive, like cycles of the seasons or gusts of swirling wind; the passages exude the rhythm of the earth, the poetry of faith and the solemnity of heavy stones. But Ian and Sal’s modern exchanges display poetry too as the debate between religion and science takes over; rocks are discussed as “Namurian. Chatworth Grit” with “recessed eroded scarp face[s] […] freeze-thaw joints” and “stress phenomena” (11) while Ian brings out his “Jesuitical pyrotechnics” (123) in a discussion of whether there exists a “sentient landscape” (87) or true “place of understanding” (152). Words swirl around each other or are fired like arrows in quick wordplay, and rhythm is traumatised further by the occasional drawn-out emotional outburst. The poetry differs, but there is poetry through it all, if one cares to look for it; the poetry of mystery and unanswered questions.

While the novel is complex and merits several readings, none of the uncertainty the reader faces in its pages can sap the pleasure of reading such a carefully-crafted, moving work; in fact, the mystery only adds to the experience. The fog of the reader’s uncertainty strikes me as being like a fog that cradles shadowy Thursbitch; a fog of energy and mystery that, even without complete comprehension can, if one engages with it, bring to life the spirits of stone, of nature, of fertility, of mortality and immortality, and bathe the reader, the characters and the valley in moods of danger, love and secrecy. Myth and folklore are enlivened through the readers’ imaginations as much as Garner’s, and if one is receptive to getting a little lost in language and allusion (which seems deliberate of Garner), and to recognising the narrative as being so much more than a sum of its undescriptive, minimalist parts, and to relying on oneself, as well as the author, to find depth and meaning in the plot and characters, then the sense of fulfilment in the reading experience is truly awe-inspiring.

Read more reviews at: http://emilykmorrison.wordpress.com/

[Delphine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came across this novel in Paul Kingsnorth's Confessions of a recovering environmentalist . In it, Kingsnorth praises the novel because of the sheer power of the landscape in it, nature being one of the protagonists. I expected it to be much like Adam Thorpe's brilliant novel Ulverton , but it turned out to be much darker, though excellent in its own way.

In Thursbitch, nature is perceived as a powerful, malignant force, symbolised in the bees, the snakes and the stones that are scattered around the hills. The main character Jack has an osmotic relationship with this power, shapeshifting regularly into a bull. When his pregnant girlfriend dies, he turns to christianity, but not for long.

Some 250 years later, the same force of nature is felt by Sal, a woman diagnosed with a terminal illness who is slowly losing her memory. She rambles along Thursbitch, along with her partner Ian. The two stories regularly interlapse: Sal and Ian find traces of a bull, Jack sees Ian carrying Sal over his shoulder. Finally, both stories are intertwined in a beautiful finale.

Nature/the landscape is not a dumb witness here, it has a religious shine to it with lots of wrath and intent and little mercy. Alan Garner's prose is sparse, his words are few, but they evoke an incredibly powerful atmosphere.

[Vasha7]

Impressive, quite impressive, but it's the kind of book I need to read twice to comment on, so I'll refrain for now. On the second reading, I'll have a map to hand, dialect dictionary, author's lectures, notes on symbolism, whatever necessary. I feel like this book would reward digging into it.

[Gav Thorpe · Rating 5 out of 5]

A remarkable book. A use of language (both narrative and dialogue) that sweeps along and yet utterly grounded in a sense of place and character. Compelling writing.

[George · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars.

[Ruth · Rating 1 out of 5]

"c2003. This was a recommendation from a book blogging site. I did not like this book at all - not the plot - not the style of writing. I am glad it was a not a lengthy book at all else I would probably have failed at finishing. The blurb and premise sounded good ""Enigmatic memorial stone, high on the bank of a prehistoric Pennine track in Cheshire....It is a mystery that lives on in the hill farms today."" Well - the only mystery to me is how so many other people seemed to have liked it and I didn't. I found it pretentious in trying to live up to reviews like ""There is more meaning and worth in a single paragraph of Alan Garner than in much of the pale thin stuff that passes for contemporary English fiction."" (Catherine Lockerbie, Scotsman). Fragmented time lines and static almost monosyllabic conversations with dialect thrown in haphazardly. In Wikipedia, the following is stated. ""Set both in the 18th century and the present day and centred on the mystery of an inscription on a rock about a murder, the novel seeks to explain time and history in terms of setting and interaction. It is a complex novel that can be read on many different levels. "" Structurally it can be regarded as a Möbius strip, since the last chapter describes the same events as the first. One is then induced to read the book again, which becomes a different experience as a result of the first reading."" Life is too short for this malarky... it really is!

"

[Becky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmmm. Alan Garner was a major author of my late childhood. His wonderful and utterly terrifying mythologising of the Peak District in the UK led to some thrilling trips to Errwood Reservoir and Macclesfield as a kid, where goblins lurked behind boulders and secret passageways to the Underworld were secreted in caves. In Thursbitch, Garner returns to the same region as an adult, in part ghost story, part history of the area. The landscape unites four very different people, who find themselves by becoming lost.

It's a great idea. In Medieval times, there's no church in the village, and the locals worship the land and animals as the sources of their wealth. Travelling Jack brings flash presents and words of the devil back from the big cities down south, until tragedy befalls hims. In the modern day, Sal battles with the fading of her mind, being destroyed by dementia yet retaining a particular memory for this location.

This book is so sparse, yet filled with a huge amount of something unspoken. Most of the book is light conversation and brief description, yet it feels like more than the sum of it's parts.

But I still wanted more. It feels a little like a draft script - not fleshed out yet, not fully realised. The kid inside me just wants the Weirdstone of Brisingamen back please!

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I was 9 or 10 our Junior School teacher read ‘The Weirdstone Of Brisingamen’ to the class. I was hooked, mythology, adventure, magic all happening to two young children. It was exciting and has always stayed with me.

Over the years I read each new Alan Garner book but they never delivered the same thrill and as time went on I found them a bit weird, hard to classify or indeed enjoy.

So after finishing my last book, which had been thick, scholarly and exhausting (though rewarding) I wanted a thin, fictional novel to give me some rest and easy pleasure. That’s how I came to choose Thursbitch, but things didn’t quite work out as I’d thought.

50 years on from when I first read him this book grabbed me at once. It’s not an easy read and I had to look up words and places regularly throughout the book, but that added to the sense of discovery.

The writing evokes place in a spectacular way, you walk along the valleys, climb tors and stumble through the marshy bogland. The characters divided but linked through time tell their stories of pagan rites, madness, joy and suffering vibrantly and with heart.

Are there places where different times intertwine and is man or woman still held and nurtured by place? The stories of Jack, Nan Sarah, Ian and Sal take you somewhere it’s up to you where you go from there.

[Dave Morris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Garner has done all this before, and better, in Red Shift. The Cheshire lingo really stretched my patience. It was presumably meant to make the 18th century bits seem authentic, but he didn't have the guys in Red Shift speak in Latin. At least the modern-day bits are in comprehensible English, but he has almost nothing for those characters to do. The story structure requires us to return to them regularly to hear the same conversation repeated in minutely different forms.

Also I'm thinking it's time we had a moratorium on authors roping in quantum theory to explain any old fairytale twaddle that comes to them over a cuppa. "Most geologists accept the idea of a sentient landscape." Sure they do, Alan; sure they do.

The real-life Turner stone tells a more interesting story, though it's probably a non-story as it was put up a century or more after the alleged events. But Garner's explanation (magic ancient spirit place, debts to pay, vatic pronouncements, woo) is a let-down.

[Peter Dunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very, very odd book. Incredibly short with sparingly (and cleverly) revealed characterisation but packs a lot of plot, and most importantly imagery into its 154 pages. Stones, bees, bulls, literal bullshit. You really come away after reading it feeling as if you know Thursbitch and would know it if instantly transported to it more worryingly you feel it might also just be possible that that landscape could also be aware of you.

[Newsha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Thursbitch was like putting pieces of a very delicate and difficult puzzle together. I don't claim I understood every page thorougly but this unfamiliarity with the language did not cause a despair in continuing the story. The story was woven together very strong and one can trust the author that this is going somewhere breath taking which actually happens in the end. The last pages truly rised strong emotions in me which yet I had to describe them for myself and this is what a great author does. The description of the ancient rituals and places were fan-tas-tic. It remind me of "string in a harp" , a young adult fantasy which somehow resembel this subject in going back and forth between modern day characters and those who in the past had sensed and seen the old ways of their era and had been one with an untamed nature.
I decided to read this book because of Susanna Clarke's enthusiasm in it and I really appreciate her writings so I would like to know her taste in reading and I am glad I did this.

[Mark Redman · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Thursbitch" by Alan Garner is a haunting exploration of time, history, and human connection woven into the rugged landscape of the Peak District. Garner's prose is lyrical yet precise, immersing you in a tale that spans centuries, blending folklore with a deeply personal narrative. I enjoyed the novel's dual timeline which reveals the interconnected lives of characters bound by a mysterious ancient place, which evokes a sense of wonder and contemplation.. As with previous Alan Garner books, Thursbitch has a rich cultural tapestry. There is also a profound reflection on the passage of time, making it a compelling read with a touch of the mystical.

[Jorgon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Garner is one of the great English fantasists and perhaps the best one at evoking the essentially spooky sense of the English landscape in his writing. This is a difficult book that reads like a cross between a Childe ballad and modern psychological (and maybe supernatural) almost-horror, but fundamentally it is about the sense of place, timeless and all-encompassing. A novel of death; of life; and of the land which is both--and which rewards repeated readings. It doesn't really get any better.

[Rob Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Garner's masterpiece. A deep, complex work exploring cyclical time, sentient landscapes, forgotten religions, psychotropic mushrooms and megaliths.

[Tom · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found the rather liberal appropriation of Jonathan Edwards' "Sinners in the Hands of An Angry God" in Turner's sermon worth noting.

[Steve Cooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

So Alan Garner!
Wouldn't recommend it as the first book of his to read, but after getting his style, prose and use of local Macclesfield dialect, from other novels, you'll love it! Weird, wonderful, trippy and quite sad too.
New where it was going quite soon into the novel, but the journey to the end was worth the trip.

[Jennifer Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to agree that similar ideas were done better in Red Shift. Different timelines in the same landscape, but the themes in this book are difficult to parse out.

The book is deliberately difficult, which makes it feel pretentious. Long passages like the Bull ....ceremony? maybe?... feel important, but also might not have happened as described. It might be paganism versus new Christianity; old gods, new gods, and newer gods in a culture war.

But it's buried in archaic language, and I do mean buried. For example:
“So you did get a second bite off his head, I see.”
“We did. An abundation. Yon good slobber of rain fixed us nicely. And yours is in, too. High Medda and all.”

"Are you too idle to get ’em? Because I can’t reach.”
“Oh, thee hoe thy taters,” said Jack.

"But tha conner fart gen thunder, think on; and bliss in this world it is a seldom thing.”

The modern timeline, while not hidden under its prose, is depressing. Deteriorating health and old age, lessened mobility, lack of connection with other people. I usually don't mind a bit of darkness and realism. But it's a bit too bleak to be overwhelmed by both.

[H.E. Bulstrode · Rating 4 out of 5]

Garner’s novel is a curious affair, and all the better for it. Compact, and spare in its prose, it manages to pack much into the generously-spaced text of its 158 pages. Interweaving two periods and two sets of characters united by a single space – the eponymous Pennine valley of the title – he creates a tale in which the landscape becomes a place of enchantment, possessed of an atmosphere dense enough to hold the imprint of memories of lives and events long since passed.

It opens with a packman and his train of horses amidst a snowstorm on an open hillside track in 1755, and it was thanks to a short and enigmatic inscription in memory of this John Turner, that Garner’s imagination set to work in crafting this piece of prose. Turner died in that storm, and but for that bare fact and mention of the print of a woman’s shoe in the snow by his side, nothing more concrete is known. Garner’s creative imagining provides the reader with a plausible character and tale behind the name, embedded within a local community linked by his wanderings to the outside world, but resolutely insular, and minded to observe its own customs and ways. Pagan echoes resound about the valley of Thursbitch, its eighteenth-century inhabitants thinking nothing of their mushroom-induced hallucinogenic rites, which with its sacrificial climax brings to mind the imagery of Mithras slaying the bull. They speak in dialect, faithfully rendered and richly textured, that some readers may not find to their taste. To my mind, however, it lends the tale an authenticity that it would otherwise lack.

The lives of these characters somehow intersect with those of an academic with a penchant for geology, and her friend, a Catholic priest, who live on the cusp of the twenty-first century. They too are enamoured with Thursbitch, but they are transitory visitors, rather than residents, who tread its paths for leisure rather than trade. A vessel fashioned from Blue John, that tumbles from above and through time, brings their worlds into contact, and fleeting glimpses suggest that the span of the years has been bridged on more than one occasion.

It is a tale of love and death, and the nature of time, place, and enchantment. The lives of both ‘couples’ is ultimately marred by loss, but Thursbitch, and their attachment to it, remains, seemingly, outside of time itself. An enchanting read.

[Althea Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I was young, Alan Garner was one of my favorite authors. His books for children capture, possibly more than any others, the beauty and magic of British folklore. Naturally, I was excited when I found out, just recently, that he's also written some material for adults (and, received an OBE for his contributions to English literature - a well-deserved honor.)

'Thursbitch' is the first 'adult' work by Garner that I was able to acquire (thanks to ILL!)

More of a study than a novel, 'Thursbitch' explores two sets of events in the titular Pennine valley. In the 18th century, we meet John Turner, a traveling trader and practitioner of traditional folk magic. In the modern day, we meet Sal and Ian, walking the same hills and rocks. Their lives touch, at moments, through time, exploring love, loss, and the connections between people...

I doubt whether I have ever encountered a more accurate or well-researched depiction of the speech and behavior of (extremely) rural, isolated 18th-century Britons. Garner is a linguist, and this book concentrates heavily on language. It's fascinating, but also makes for a rather challenging read.

In the present, Sal is an accomplished geologist - who is also suffering from a debilitating brain disease. So she also speaks in an argot, which makes an interesting contrast.

(I did wonder whether it would be as challenging for speakers of UK English, and whether this factored into why it hasn't been published in the USA.)

As a work of literature, 'Thursbitch' is impressive and interesting. However, emotionally, I didn't love it as much as I've loved Garner's other works.