Where Shall We Run To?

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A NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR

From one of our greatest living writers, comes a remarkable memoir of a forgotten England.

'The war went. We sang in the playground, "Bikini lagoon, an atom bomb’s boom, and two big explosions." David’s father came back from Burma and didn’t eat rice. Twiggy taught by reciting “The Pied Piper of Hamelin”, “The Charge of the Light Brigade” and the thirteen times table. Twiggy was fat and short and he shouted, and his neck was as wide as his head. He was a bully, though he didn’t take any notice of me.’

In Where Shall We Run To?, Alan Garner remembers his early childhood in the Cheshire village of Alderley Edge: life at the village school as ‘a sissy and a mardy-arse'; pushing his friend Harold into a clump of nettles to test the truth of dock leaves; his father joining the army to guard the family against Hitler; the coming of the Yanks, with their comics and sweets and chewing gum. From one of our greatest living writers, it is a remarkable and evocative memoir of a vanished England.

Critics Review

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n Praise for Where Shall We Run To:n

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u2018In old age childhood memories become vivid again and itu2019s the present that disappears behind a confusion of vivid fragments. In this book, Garner, now old, has faced that pattern and in place of the bewildering, wonky memory of old age, produced something precise and fresh as flowers. He has become u2013 as weu2019re told we must u2013 as a little child. Heu2019s also produced one of the best things heu2019s ever written.u2019 Frank Cotterell-Boyce, New Statesman

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u2018Its encounters are vivid and immediate, but it is also an examination of class and change in the England of those years.u2019 Erica Wagner, Financial Times

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u2018Every street, every house, every carved stone, mysterious well, dark pond and perilously steep cliff-edge is remembered and described, as Garner roams through it, with a succession of companionsu2026. Garneru2019s detailed recall of so many characters and events is extraordinaryu2019 Sue Gaisford, The Tablet

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u2018In this slight but charming memoir about his wartime childhood in Alderley Edge, Garner has pulled off the same trick u2013 making the Cheshire landscape feel fresh, while bringing a new perspective to a tried and tested literary form..and Oh, what languageu2019 Ben Lawrence, Sunday Telegraph

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u2018This is a book very much about reading and writing, about the marks that we use to give life meaning, whether they are a trampu2019s chalk-mark on a wall or the comics and Arthur Meeu2019s The Childrenu2019s Encyclopaedia that allow young Alan to get past block capitals and closer to Real Writing. It is also a book written without a single scrap of hindsight, or rationalisation of the past. This, then, is a writeru2019s memoiru2019 Brian Morton, Herald

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n Praise for Alan Garner:n

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u2018 I salute him with the most heartfelt respect and admirationu2019 Philip Pullman

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