Tanglewreck by Jeanette Winterson

AZ: "Time is big business, and whoever gets control of time controls life as we know it! In a house called Tanglewreck lives a girl called Silver and her guardian Mrs Rokabye. Unbeknown to Silver there is a family treasure in the form of a seventeenth-century watch called the Timekeeper, and this treasure holds the key to the mysterious and frightening changes in time. When Silver goes on the run to try and protect herself and the Timekeeper"

Was interested in this because I like Winterson's fiction anyway and my mum brought Cj Winterson's book The King of Capri which is beautifully illustrated and has a lovely mythical quality. Tanglewreck is like Pullman but also has those lovely mythic qualities, deliniating the connections between old and new magic (science) and raises the interesting question of the implications of the increasingly frenetic pace of 21st century life.

137: "In New York City the tops of the buildings tear the sky. When the snow falls the tops of the buildings look like mountain peaks. The most important people in the city live and work as high as they can on their man-made mountains. When they want to travel, a helicopter lands on the roof and carries them away, just as enchanters on glass mountains whistled for eagles."