Powsels and Thrums: A Tapestry of a Creative Life

by Alan Garner

In this lyrical and revelatory memoir, Alan Garner, Booker shortlisted author of Treacle Walker, traces the line of his life: from a working-class childhood in the landscape of Cheshire during World War II, through a grammar school education and on to the University of Oxford, and then home to see if he could become what he most desired: a writer.

We see the serendipitous moments that drove his course, from coming-of-age in a period of great cultural change, to crossing paths with a famous mathematician while out long-distance running, to the fateful day he chanced across Blackden, the medieval hall, miraculously located next to the giant telescope at Jodrell Bank, that was to become his lasting home and the setting for Treacle Walker.

We also hear the influences and ideas that have shaped his work: his Grandfather Joseph and family of craftsmen; the history, folklore and ancient landscape of Cheshire; a profound love of storytelling across the ages and a sense of wonder for the ineffable magic of creativity.

As Garner tells us, a lifetime of working with a pen produces the powsels and thrums of research, imagination and story. These oddments can be shaped into something more than its parts: a vivid tapestry of a creative life that will inspire any reader, and what a celebration it is.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Essays, Biography

229 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2024

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

[JOHN ASHWORTH · Rating 4 out of 5]

Time beyond imagining

Having not read any of Alan Garner’s work the Telegraph review of this book was an opening into a world both known and unknown.
I am so pleased to have entered this world, mine will never be the same again.

Part memoir part history and landscape, the individual insights form a universe of knowledge and mystery enlightened by a lifetime of research.
All who read and absorb this book will be blessed .

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alan Garner comes from a long line of Cheshire craftsmen: blacksmiths, white smiths, stonemasons and hand loom weavers. Oddments of cloth produced by the weaving process that had no retail value, were kept for family use and known as ‘powsels and thrums’. This marvellous late book (Garner is now ninety) records the powsels and thrums of his own long and productive creative life. Ranging across the rich mixture of influences and interests that make him such a fascinating and rewarding writer, it’s an immensely satisfying record of creative genius. Firmly hefted to the small area of Cheshire where he and previous generations of his family have lived for centuries he is nevertheless an author who deals in universal themes: myth, landscape, the power and mutability of language, time and space (he lives in a medieval house on the site of a prehistoric burial ground that has been inhabited continuously for ten thousand years - which just happens to be a couple of fields away from the Jodrell Bank observatory where radio waves from deep time and space are received and interpreted). In a book of many delights, two in particular stand out for me: the short account of sharing runs through the Cheshire countryside with a mathematician from Manchester University who he later discovers to be Alan Turing and the story behind his novel Thursbitch, one of the strangest and most disturbing books I have ever read, based on the dark history of a remote Cheshire valley of the same name.

[Veronica · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brilliant title, and as it implies, this book is a mixed bag. A collection ranging from personal recollections to fairly academic lectures about language, etymology, and myth. The latter could be quite hard going, but the insights into Garner’s creative life are fascinating. I loved his account of the writing of Thursbitch (which I haven’t read yet), and his reminiscences of his grandfather. There’s lots of other good stuff, including about his amazing house, which he’s lived in since his 20s. But if you’re new to his non-fiction writing I’d recommend The Voice That Thunders first.

Oh, and for the record I still think it’s criminal that he didn’t win the Booker for Treacle Walker. He’s a great writer, still writing at 90, who should be celebrated during his lifetime.

[Evie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish Alan Garner could live and write forever

[Steve Cooper · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful reflections and an amazing life told in his own unique way.
If you're a Garner fan, this is a must, a joyous read from the first page to the last, unforgettable!

[Courtney Johnston]

Is it more than the sum of its parts? No. It’s repetitive to a fault. But I loved what I was connected to in terms of the human history and the earth magic Garner draws on in his books. Especially great if you loved Treacle Walker.

[Kelly-Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just lovely.

[Stewart Monckton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book - while it is 'just' a collection of bits and pieces of writing, the core of the book is about how the author writes. This is fascinating reading.

If you enjoy any of Garners novels I would recommend this.

SM

[Don · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you have enjoyed any of Alan Garner’s novels, especially the later ones, then you should certainly read this book – it will provide useful background and understanding. If you have not, you will probably find it interesting — if you would be interested in the remarkable life of a writer who knows much about words, language, landscape, social history, myth, archaeology, cosmology and more, and has the writerly skills to share what he knows in a cogent, thoughtful, readable form. In any case, having read it, it is likely that you will then (as I will, now) seek out his books to read, or reread.

Although the title implies that the book is a collection of oddments, patched together, Garner’s point in choosing it is that his weaver forebears used their powsels and thrums to make useful garments for their families — the whole became more than the sum of its parts. And so it is with this memoir, which is not simply the collection of oddments of writing that it might, at first, appear: there are threads running through the whole thing. We learn much about Garner’s life, about some of the remarkable people (some very famous) he has met, the ancient house where he has lived his long adult life, and also about how he writes, what he thinks of the process of creativity (he seems to agree with Jung on this one), the nature of myth and legend (and the difference between them), a real-life incidence of apparent ‘time-slipping’, and much else. There is much here that is fascinating and insightful; the style is consistently economical but poetically descriptive, compassionate and understanding of its subjects (including Garner and his family), and as well-structured as one expects from a master story-teller.

If this book has a fault from this reader’s point of view, it is that it is not long enough – I would like to know more of Garner’s life and wisdom (although there is a memoir of his childhood to seek out). But from his perspective, I’m sure that he has told us all he wishes to (which is a great deal in concentrated form): it concludes, simply, ‘Finis’.

[Nick Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was ten Alan Garner was, for a period, my favourite writer, bridging a gap between Susan Cooper and CS Lewis. Even as I moved on to other concerns Garner's writing remained with me and informed a view of Britain rooted firmly in the land and language of our ancestors.

This tapestry is made up of thoughts, poems, musings and lecturer notes, yet in the hands of a master storyteller has a narrative structure which would grace any novel. The overall effect is a tale of a life, connected to generations of his family, connected to the land on which they live.

I feel a re-reading of Garner's early novels coming on and will definitely take the opportunity to read some of his later works for the first time. It will be interesting to see if my view of his writing has changed over the decades (I suspect not since I recently read and lived Treacle Walker). This leaves me with only one question, with the literary establishment now lauding Garner as one of the greatest writers in the English language why has it taken them until now to realise what I knew some 44 years ago?

[Colin Cheesman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alan Garner has long been one of our favourite writers. Anyone who has Colin and Susan as the main protagonists in their fiction is always off to a good start - my wife is a Susan!
This book is a collection of writings, poems, and some lectures, over a long period of activity. Right from the earliest outings to long researched stories of his grandfather. It is absolutely fascinating, but it is not a biography in the commonly understood sense.
Garner displays his vast knowledge of place, history and language throughout the book and most of all of Alderley Edge in Cheshire and his home at Toad Hall. But you are never left behind or bewildered. His writing style spurs you along as you share his endeavours and research.
A thoroughly brilliant read and one of the best Xmas presents from 2024 so far.
This review is based on the book.

[J.A. Ironside · Rating 5 out of 5]

This rewards the patient and careful reader. It's not a classic biography or a collection of essays. It's a meditation on land and language and how each influences the other. Garner rambles but it's deliberate: there's purpose in his rambling - you can't get to the otherworld by travelling in a straight line over the shortest distance. You have to work your way in via thin places, layer by layer. In case you're wondering Powsels and Thrums are smaller pieces of cloth that can be worked into a larger garment. Not patchwork, but something greater than the sum of its parts. That's exactly what this book is.

[Tansy Hepton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is probably a case of expectations too high. I love his fiction and his memoir "Where Shall We Run To?" was my book of the year when it came out. I was hoping for more of the same, but this is a collection of part memoir and part lectures, with a few poems added.
I'm sure the lectures met the audiences' needs, but they are quite heavy going for the average reader.
However, the book is made worthwhile by the chapters describing his home and the surrounding area. The writing, of course, is superb.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

As uneven as you might expect from a collection of bits and bobs. I learned a lot about the author that I didn't know before and it has deepened my appreciation of and affection for his writing. I was glad to see that at least one reviewer came to the book fresh without having read anything else - and still thought it was good. And another reviewer mentions a memoir "Where Shall We Run To?" that I read when it was published (2018) but completely forgot about!

[Ivan Monckton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This feels like Alan Garner, in his 90s, gathering together the last bits and pieces, or powsels and thrums, of his long and illustrious writing life. A collection of poems, reminiscences, lectures and stories. I have enjoyed his work for more than 50 years, this included. It seems very appropriate that almost the last piece is a work of detection on the origins and exploration of a legend of Alderley Edge as told by the author’s grandfather.

[Hugo · Rating 5 out of 5]

A tapestry of history and mystery, as Garner takes us from autobiography to fiction, poetry to folklore, all the while passing through history and over landscape, always looking, always digging, examining the geography of places and people, buildings and barrows, language and custom, throughout a lifetime of literary archeology. Finis, indeed.

[David Heard · Rating 5 out of 5]

A marvel of a book that digs so deeply into the creative process of one of the world's greatest writers that it feels as though you could emulate his achievements.
Garner writes with wit, charm, ferocious intelligence, and constant curiosity about the region of his birth and life.
It is indeed a tapestry of his creative life and an exceedingly rich one.

[Taff Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this to be like a book of revelations, unpicking the mythology and hidden history behind many of Alan Garner’s great and mysterious works of fiction. His own generational place in the landscape of Alderley Edge and in the creative crafts of his forbears link him back to the times when barrows were built and flints cut. Spellbinding in every sense

[T P Kennedy · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a book of oddments. The bits I liked (generally his autobiographical reminiscences), I greatly liked. Unfortunately, there's a few lengthy academic addressed included as well. There's some repetition as much of the book is re-used material. The net result is a book that's slightly less than the sum of its parts. Made for a good travelling companion though!

[Matthew Cartledge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this has made me want to revisit The Owl Service, and Red Shift books I read as a teenager, there is clearly a lot of depth there I missed first time around! This book has elements of memoir, exposition on landscape, family history and more besides. Garner is an insightful guide, a true polymath.

[James Marshall · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful collection of essays, lectures, and poems about Garner's family and the local landscape. Insightful and inspiring, it shows how deep Garner's thinking and knowledge are and how they underpin his writing.
How is he not more recognised and is books higher on the charts?

[Alan Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have little to add to the other reviews. An enjoyable mix, with some weighty ruminations that I found heavy going, but the rest was wonderful.

I listened to the audiobook, read by Robert Powell, who does a fine job. Thoroughly recommended.

[Gordon MacLellan · Rating 5 out of 5]

a fascinating, challenging, inspiring read.

[Cooper Renner · Rating 5 out of 5]

An assemblage of disparate texts is going to have its greater and lesser contents. Not everything here is 5-star, but the best of it is. Read.

[Mr Timothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Simply stunning. Quite possibly the most thought provoking book I’ve ever read.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

A series of essays and stories by the wonderful Alan Garner, as interesting and enthralling as ever.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Legend. Fascinating to read about his thought processes.