Treacle Walker

"Shortlist"

"Two of the books are about an individual discovering who they are, and what they can become— Treacle Walker and Oh William! . The other four are big historical narratives. Treacle Walker is a mysterious tale of a young boy, as he tries to make sense of the world around him. The obvious parallel is The Little Prince . He is a child alone, and you never know why. There’s no particular sense of the child having been abandoned, but that child is living in a universe of his own. And into that universe comes the mysterious figure of Treacle Walker, who shows him how to see the world, how to think the world. And how much of the world simply cannot be understood. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter What is wonderful about the book is that it’s a journey through a landscape that cannot be grasped by reason alone. It’s about enabling the child to set off on his own journey—there’s a marvellous moment at the end, when the boy himself takes the reins of Treacle Walker’s cart and sets off on his own. It’s a bildungsroman , to use the pretentious literary term. But what I like about it is that the start point and the end point of the world can never be fully understood. We don’t understand the world in which we live and have to live, and every child is alone in confronting this world. But I don’t know if that’s what the book is about at all. If we’re talking about worlds made by language, then the supreme example of that, in these six books, is Treacle Walker. It’s a world of enchantment that goes far beyond our rational understanding. Don’t think of it as singling out the ‘best’ work of fiction, among these six possible titles. What we’re saying is that these are six books that we want to recommend to people to read and re-read. These are books that repay close reading. These are fictions that will enrich your life. The point of the Booker Prize is to proclaim the significance of fiction, why it matters. It’s a serious business. Of course, we read for enjoyment. But enjoyment often is, as you know, the result of hard work or training. We can work at enjoyment, to enjoy even more. None of these are ‘easy’ books, but they are all, I believe, very enjoyable. What we were looking for was to be able to say that these are books that will enrich your life if you give them time and attention."