The book explores ideas of power of creation, the right of creation, good and evil, revenge … The story is interesting for the dynamics of the relationships between all the characters and the movement from innocence to terrible knowledge. This book, like the others, is grounded in the real world. Because the world and the relationships between the characters and everything is so real it is easy to enter fully and I think it is the whole-hearted acceptance of the world which makes the supernatural events as they emerge (so slowly like a dripping tap) so unsettling. He loves clay because it is “alive” – it’s the material from which God shaped Adam and the silky suppleness of wet clay is malleable like the human skin. Shortly afterwards his mother father died and his mother went mad.ĭavie’s mum and the priest encourage him to make friends with this lonely boy who has come to the village in such tragic circumstances. Stephen has a gift for making beautiful creatures out of clay. Then Stephen Rose moves in with his aunt “Crazy Mary”. Stephen Rose was sent away to train as a priest at 11 years old but was thrown out and returned to his parents. Apart from the threat of Mouldy, the leader of the rival gang of boys, (a boy as big as a man and often reeking of beer who seems to take their battles too far) theirs seems a comfortable, naive existence. Clay / David Almond – I have enjoyed David Almond’s books such as Skellig and Kit’s Wilderness because the stories and characters are so gripping and Clay was no exception. The story is told by Davie, a teenage boy. Davie is an altar boy, along with his best mate Geordie, and they make money at funerals and hang out together in their hideout plotting out the next attack on a rival gang of boys.

Clay by David Almond