Powsels and Thrums: Tales from a Creative Life

British novelist Garner (Treacle Walker) presents a charming collection of essays and poems about his family life and artistic influences. The book is dedicated to Garner’s grandfather, whose talent for weaving and eccentric love of British bus schedules and sewer systems moved the author to value creativity and left-field thinking from an early age. He profiles his grandfather across several brief chapters before branching out. In “Feel Free,” Garner discusses his anxiety about writing short stories, then treats readers to a sumptuously layered one; in “Up Them Fields and What Was Found There,” he details the discovery and purchase of his home in Blackden, and the painstaking restoration of the property’s derelict cottage. As Garner discusses the strange sensation of adapting his own novels for TV and includes bits of striking verse (“A girl in our village makes love in the courtyard,” begins one poem), the volume’s lack of a rigid structure becomes a virtue, allowing a restless creative mind to share decades of insight across a wide range of topics. This is a treasure. Agent: Karolina Sutton, CAA. (Nov.)