The Unfortunates

‘Playful, moving and wholly remarkable’ Guardian ‘A small miracle’ New Statesman ‘Mastery of craft, resonance and deep feeling on every page’ Telegraph An introspective young boy, Joseph Coppock squints at the world with his lazy eye. Living alone in an old house, he reads comics, collects birds’ eggs and plays with his marbles. When, one day, a rag-and-bone man called Treacle Walker appears, exchanging an empty jar of a cure-all medicine and a donkey stone for a pair of Joseph's pyjamas and a lamb's shoulder blade, a mysterious friendship develops between them. A fusion of myth, magic and the stories we make for ourselves, Treacle Walker is an extraordinary novel from one of our greatest living writers. ‘All the exuberance and eccentricity, all the deep thought and resounding mythology of [Garner’s] best work’ Observer ‘Spare and allusive… luminous and understated’ Rowan Williams, New Statesman ‘Cryptic, evocative, sparely told and deceptively simple’ Carolyne Larrington, TLS A NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR • A TLS BOOK OF THE YEAR • A GUARDIAN BEST FICTION BOOK OF 2021