Age 12+

This book introduces a couple of comic and irreverent altar boys, who are like Gerdie versions of characters written by Roddy Doyle. They have larky lives, except for their sufferings at the hands of Martin Mould, a vicious local bully. When a strange boy arrives in town, it seems that Davie and his friend have found someone to help them frighten “Mouldy”. The stranger is the orphan son of a hypnotist, and astonishing and deadly events ensue, involving sensitive Davie in a life-changing trauma. The tale that unfolds is funny, mysterious, moving, frightening and so deftly constructed as to be fiercely compelling. Ever since Skellig, Almond’s first novel for children, it has been one of his motifs to introduce something inexplicable into ordinary lives. Here, those ordinary lives in a 1950s community that is split (at least at schoolboy level) by a Catholic/Protestant divide, are transportingly evoked. The book leaves the reader wondering whether something supernatural did indeed happen. What is certain is that Stephen, the disturbed newcomer, is brilliantly realised, and this is extraordinary storytelling, not beneath the attention of adult readers.

(Hodder £10.99)

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