David Almond: Memory and Magic (review)

Although a relative newcomer to young adult literature, his first YA novel having been published in 1998, David Almond has firmly established himself as a master of magic realism. In less than a decade, his novels have garnered numerous important awards, including, but not limited to, the Whitebread Children's Book of the Year Award (Skellig and Fire-Eaters); the Nestlé (Smarties) Book Award (Fire-Eaters and Kit's Wilderness [silver prize]); the Michael L. Printz Award (Kit's Wilderness, Fire-Eaters, and Skellig [honor book]); and the Boston-Globe Horn Book Award (Fire-Eaters). This critical recognition and Almond's wide popularity have resulted in Don Latham's David Almond, part of the series, Studies of Young Adult Literature, from Scarecrow Press.

Although he began his writing career as a writer of adult fiction, Almond is best known for his masterful use of magic realism in young adult fiction, and Latham provides a detailed look at Almond's life and his major works to date. In the initial chapter entitled, "Memory and Magic," Latham analyzes the intersection of Almond's life and his writing, tracing the many parallel themes running between the two. Latham then analyzes the body of Almond's work, devoting individual chapters to Counting Stars (2000), Skellig (1998), Kit's Wilderness (1999), Heaven Eyes (2000), Fire-Eaters (2003), Clay (2005); and a composite chapter that looks at the plays Wild Girl, Wild Boy (2001) and Secret Heart (2001), and the picture book Kate, the Cat and the Moon (2004).

Almond recounts much of his early life in the collection of short stories, Counting Stars, a volume that was actually written before Skellig (1998) and Kit's Wilderness (1999), but not published until 2000 in the United Kingdom and 2002 in the United States. Counting Stars was originally written for an adult audience, but ended up being marketed for young adults because of the success of Skellig and Kit's Wilderness as young adult fiction. Almond had actually published several pieces of adult fiction before writing his young adult work; and thus Latham chooses to look at Counting Stars first because it serves as a transitional piece between Almond's adult and young adult work (15–16). Also, as a heavily autobiographical collection, Counting Stars provides a useful point to begin an examination of Almond's life and work. Indeed, Latham's reading of Counting Stars emphasizes the intersection of Almond's lived experiences with his artistic craft, or the nexus of memory and magic.

Almond was born in 1951 in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a former coal-mining town in northwest England. He had a large, extended, and very close-knit family growing up. Almond's family was Roman Catholic, and the Irish priests in his parish church exerted a strong influence on the local community. He was also influenced by a series of personal tragedies. When he was eight, his younger sister, Barbara, died. And when Almond was fifteen, his father died. In addition, his mother suffered from a progressive and debilitating form of arthritis. These early sorrows were counterbalanced in his life by the deep love of his family, and these strong emotional currents feed Almond's work (2–3).

Almond has also said that he disliked school as an adolescent, although he enjoyed reading books from the local library. Moreover, after reading Ernest Hemingway's short story, "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," Almond realized that he wanted to be a writer himself (2). After secondary school, Almond went to university, graduating with honors from University of East Anglia in 1975. After graduation, Almond married his first wife. He wanted to write, but had to hold a variety of jobs to earn a living. He taught for a short while, but left teaching in 1982 to work full time on his writing. For the next sixteen years Almond wrote short stories mainly for an adult audience, publishing two collections: Sleepless Nights in 1985 and A Kind Of Heaven in 1997. He...