Garner’s tenth novel is a slim, strange and wonderful creature: mercurial, funny, frightening, enigmatic. It weaves autobiographical threads with folklore, symbol and archaeology – and with children’s comics; it plays with glimpses of ancient life, parallel worlds and quantum physics. “I don’t invent, I find”, says Garner of his work – and indeed Treacle Walker came to him in a conversation with a friend, who told him about a Cheshire tramp of that name, long gone, who claimed to heal anything but jealousy. Garner’s imagination and language blossom miraculously and our understanding of time erupts and loosens. What larks! (Also available in paperback.)