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Thursbitch [Paperback]

Alan Garner
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
RRP: £8.99
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Book Description

2 Sep 2004

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.

This enigmatic memorial stone, high on the bank of a prehistoric Pennine track in Cheshire, is a mystery that lives on in the hill farms today.

John Turner was a packman. With his train of horses he carried salt and silk, travelling distances incomprehensible to his ancient community. In this visionary tale, John brings ideas as well as gifts, which have come, from market town to market town, from places as distant as the campfires of the Silk Road. John Turner's death in the eighteenth century leaves an emotional charge which, in the twenty-first century, Ian and Sal find affects their relationship, challenging the perceptions they have of themselves and of each other. Thursbitch is rooted in a verifiable place. It is an evocation of the lives and the language of all people who are called to the valley of Thursbitch.

(20031017)

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Thursbitch + Boneland (Weirdstone Trilogy 3)
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Product details

  • Paperback: 176 pages
  • Publisher: Vintage; New Ed edition (2 Sep 2004)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0099459361
  • ISBN-13: 978-0099459361
  • Product Dimensions: 13 x 1.1 x 19.8 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 165,424 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Review

Eerie and immaculately written (Olivia Laing Observer )

A rare flight of the imagination - and an unforgettable book (Metro )

The land does indeed seem alive thanks to Garner's acute sense of place and his delight in language...This novel crackles with linguistic life (Sunday Times )

Garner's book is only a slim volume, yet in the ideas and possibilities it suggests, it punches well above its weight (Sunday Herald )

The experience of reading Thursbitch is so overwhelming that, after closing the book, it remains more real than anything around one... His art reaches out from the society of ancestors... with trepidation undoubtedly but also with a transforming, youthful hope (Independent )

Book Description

'Magnificent. A powerful and deeply felt narrative - Thursbitch resonates with liminal, potent songs' Financial Times (20031017)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
48 of 49 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Delicate and Haunting 11 April 2005
By M. R. N. Shackelford TOP 1000 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
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, and 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, and enjoy some real magic - read this book. The language is occassionally obscure but well worth the effort.
As a child I loved the Wierdstone of Brisinghamen and the Moon of Gomrath - and now that I am "grown-up", I was delighted to find an Alan Garner book for adults.
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40 of 42 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Life and Death Come Together on the Moors 9 Jan 2004
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Alan Garner has consistently written captivating and elegaic novels. From The Weirdstone of Brisingamen right up to date with Thursbitch. Don't let the mildly off putting title distract you. This is a superb novel reverberating between the past and the present. Its material is quite dark but Garner puts it all in a context which ends on a sad but triumphant note. Even though it a quite short it is so crammed with meaning that you feel as though you have just read a block buster. And indeed you have, if you like thought provoking, orignal and moving stories Thursbitch is exceptional - buy it now.
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62 of 66 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars More than a visionary fable... 5 Oct 2003
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
I don't have the words to describe Thursbitch, the book. Hauntingly beautiful, sad and uplifting, enthralling and terrible: these only hint at the magic that Alan Garner has pursued for half a century, and which he now shares with us.

The dust jacket describes Thursbitch as a "visionary fable rooted in a verifiable place". It doesn't mention Alan Garner's fanatical depth of research; his ability to awaken atmosphere from the earth and stones under our feet; the uncannily bare descriptions of people and place, leaving everything but nothing to the reader's imagination; or the sheer honesty which pervades every page.

Thursbitch is Alan Garner's solution to a conundrum, an ancient puzzle, but it is so much more than an historical novel. It is built from the humanity of the Stone Book quartet; it resolves the questions left by Red Shift; draws more mythic power from the land than the Owl Service; and resonates with the poetry which concluded the Moon of Gomrath. Strandloper, an incredible achievement, stands now as a waymarker: Thursbitch is the heart.

Read it, quietly and alone, and be humbled.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews
4.0 out of 5 stars Thursbitch
Powerful well written story that is good enough to stretch the reader mentally and spiritually Full of mystery, I always wanted to read further to find out what the next surprise... Read more
Published 23 days ago by baz123
5.0 out of 5 stars A writer in William Golding's mould
Nearly 50 years after William Golding wrote The Inheritors Alan Garner wrote Thursbitch. Both are trying to catch the lives and values of bygone generations, recreating their lost... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Neasa MacErlean
3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed
I have been reading Alan Garner since the early 1960s when I encountered The Weirdstone of Brisingamen as a child. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Lintywhite
5.0 out of 5 stars The best yet.
If you like Alan Garner's novels, then you will most likely love this one. To me, it is a kind of culmination of all of his previous work, perhaps moreso than the more recent... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Evi
4.0 out of 5 stars Four and half stars really, with the fifth halved for obscurity
My first Alan Garner book and I found it baffling, strange, haunting and wonderful from the very first sentences: "He climbed from Sooker and the snow was drifting. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Eileen Shaw
5.0 out of 5 stars Haunting
Alan Garner is a fascinating story teller, and man, having read a book of his lectures. From one fragment of documented history he creates a very fluid sort of magic. Read more
Published 6 months ago by A. Woodfin
5.0 out of 5 stars Strange and Stark
Like all Alan Garner's work, this is beautifully crafted. The reader moves from the usual world of 'what you see is what you get' to one where the laws of cause and effect are... Read more
Published 18 months ago by Stargazer
5.0 out of 5 stars Evocative story
Like other reviewers I read earlier books by Alan Graner when I was much younger, and still re read them regularly.
Thursbitch tugged at my heart strings. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Alison Kay
5.0 out of 5 stars Needs to be read twice (at least)
As others have said this is a beautiful and haunting book. It is deceptively slim but each page requires careful reading and it isn't until it's read for the second time that the... Read more
Published on 1 April 2011 by the hill mouse
4.0 out of 5 stars Stones, bees, bulls
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. Read more
Published on 3 Jan 2011 by P. J. Dunn
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