Treacle Walker by Alan Gardner

I read this because it was short listed for the Booker Prize, but it is the first book that I have read by this prolific author. He is best known for his wildly successful children's books, whereas his adult books are which are more difficult and quixotic and less well known (and it seems less popular). This book combines the qualities of both, containing the magical aspect of his children’s fiction and the emotional and philosophical complexity of his adult work. Joe, our hero, is a child living a strange and circumscribed existence. He has been poorly, he says, and wears a patch to correct a lazy eye. He spends his days by watching the passing of the train through the valley below. One day a rag-and-bone man appears, named Treacle Walker, and offers Joe a cup and a stone in exchange for an old pair of pyjamas and a lamb’s shoulder bone. The cup has Joe’s name written upon it, the stone is inscribed with the picture of a horse--these are the ingredients: an obscure but resonant objects, a present that feels wedded to a mythical past, a questioning child seeking to unravel the mysteries of an off-kilter world, a landscape freighted with meaning. We are then launched into a story where Joe's eye can see what we cannot, and Treacle is part prophet and part something else altogether. My favorite part is the neologisms, but the rest is pretty great.