Truckers

The narrator was clearly thinking of Monty Python's ‘priest reading from the holy book' during much of this. So glad to discover another world from Terry Pratchett's imagination. Right up there with [b:The Wee Free Men 34494 The Wee Free Men (Discworld, #30; Tiffany Aching, #1) Terry Pratchett https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1443764106l/34494.SY75.jpg 62580]

A small band of nomes (think: gnomes) leaves the Outside and travels in the back of a truck to the Store where they discover a huge city of nomes. For generations, the Store nomes have lived inside, divided up into contentious departmental groups. The nomes learn that the Store is to be destroyed in twenty-one days. To escape, the nomes must do the impossible: the nomes must learn how to work together to drive a huge eighteen-wheeler to a safe location.

A silly delight of a book, filled with the usual Terry Pratchett nonsense.

Some random quotes:

“The important thing about being a leader is not being right or wrong but being certain. Of course, it helps to be right as well, the Abbot conceded.”

“I don't know enough words, he thought. Some things you can't think unless you know the right words.”

“It was always a good idea, he said, to be good at something other people couldn't or didn't want to do.”

“Nomes had always lived in corners of the world, and suddenly there weren't too many corners anymore. The numbers started going down. A lot of this was due to natural causes, and when you're four inches high, natural causes can be anything with teeth and speed and hunger.”

‘“What's up with him?” asked Masklin.
“He's having to think,” she said. “That always worries people.”‘

“According to Gurder, the big pink humans that stood in Fashions, and Kiddies Klothes, and Young Living, and never moved at all, were those who had incurred Arnold Bros (est. 1905)'s displeasure. They had been turned into horrible pink stuff, and some said they could even be taken apart. But certain Klothian philosophers said no, they were particularly good humans, who had been allowed to stay in the store forever, and not made to disappear at Closing Time. Religion was very hard to understand.”

This is book #1 of The Bromeliad Trilogy. It's really a kid's series but worth it as a lighthearted adult read. The story is about a group of Nomes (no G) who live in a hedgerow outside an English city. They face being trodden on by humans or eaten by foxes, In a severe winter and with too many of them eaten they sneak on board a truck at the motorway service centre. It takes them to a department store in the city.

And there they find other Nomes living in the store. Neither community knew the other existed. City Nomes and Country Nomes have to find some way to get along.

Disaster strikes when they find out the store is to be shut down and they all have to find somewhere else to live. So they engineer some planks and ropes and teach themselves how to drive the truck and escape the store, which they accidentally set alight as they leave.

It was an extra delight for me when the truck dropped the Nomes at Arnold Bros department store. Pratchett names a street alongside the store. Arnold's department store in Great Yarmouth was started by my ancestors and that same street runs past it. So the Nomes were sheltering in my families old business. Arnolds was later bought and renamed by Debenhams.