Secret Heart [Import] [Hardcover]

David Almond (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 202 pages
• Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton, London; 1st ed/1st printing edition (2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0340764821
• ISBN-13: 978-0340764824
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)

More About the Author

author spotlight
"Writing can be difficult, but sometimes it really does feel like a kind of magic. I think that stories are living things--among the most important things in the world."--David Almond

David Almond is the winner of the 2001 Michael L. Printz Award for Kit's Wilderness, which has also been named best book of the year by School Library Journal, Booklist, and Publishers Weekly. His first book for young readers, Skellig, is a Printz Honor winner.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Miraculous beings living in a miraculous world . . .
Maybe it comes from my religious upbringing (I grew up in a big Catholic family): I do feel that we are miraculous beings living in a miraculous world. Sometimes the explanations we're given--and the possibilities we're offered--are just too restricted and mechanistic. Stories offer us a place to explore (as writers and readers) what it is to be fully human. I do think that young people are interested in the major questions--Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? Is there a God?--and they're willing to contemplate all kinds of possibilities. They haven't yet become tired by such questions.

Brutality has to be allowed its place . . .
Ten minutes of TV news is enough to convince anybody that the world is a pretty brutal place. We aren't yet perfect people living in a perfect world--and we never will be--so brutality has to be allowed its place. But the world also contains great tenderness, joy, hope, etc. I suppose that in my books I explore a world and people that are made up of opposites: good and evil, light and darkness, the beautiful and the ugly. And I hope that in the end, goodness, light, and beauty will have some kind of upper hand.

Stories as a whole form a kind of community . . .
The stories in Counting Stars don't have a straightforward chronological progression, but there are many links between the different stories. They form a kind of mosaic. Themes hinted at in one story are developed in another. Characters are seen in different situations/settings. I like to think that the stories as a whole form a kind of community or family. It's often said that there's a big difference between writing short stories and novels, but I'm not so sure. I think of my novels as a series of scenes/chapters, each of which I write with the same kind of attention I'd give to a short story.

A readership of four . . .
When I began to write Counting Stars, I wanted to write about my sisters and brother, and to use their real names, so I needed their permission. I worried that they wouldn't be happy about the book. So I invited them all to my house for dinner, and afterwards I told them my plans, and I nervously read one of the first stories, "The Fusilier." If they had said no to using their real names, Counting Stars would have been a very different book--and maybe wouldn't have been written at all. But they said yes! Over the next couple of years, after I'd written each story, I sent copies to my brother and three sisters, so that they could see how things were developing. So, in a sense, the book was written for a readership of four people.

Staring out of the window . . .
I write at home, in a little office overlooking the back garden. I scribble in an artist's sketchbook and type onto an AppleMac computer. I work all day--though some of that time will involve staring out of the window and eating apples. But I also travel quite a lot, so I'm used to writing on trains, in hotels, etc.

I used to wonder if I'd ever be able to write a novel properly . . .
For many years, I wrote nothing but short stories, and I used to wonder if I'd ever be able to write a novel properly. I wrote the stories in Counting Stars before I wrote Skellig, my first children's novel. I wrote them over a two-year period. As I wrote them, I found myself exploring childhood experience from a child's point of view. I rediscovered the powerful imaginative and emotional nature of childhood. Really, writing these stories changed me into a writer for children/young adults.

Messing about with paper clips . . .
I always wanted to be a writer. I wrote little books and stories as a boy, and wanted to see my books on the shelves of our little local library right next to my favorite books: King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table, The Day of the Triffids, and The Adventures of Turkey. But as for writing, I simply like it all--right from creating new stories to messing about with paper clips. The best piece of writing advice I've ever received: Don't give up.

It's often children who read the books with the most insight . . .
I think that children can be much more perceptive, creative, and intelligent than we give them credit for. I see this in the many letters I get from my readers and in the things that they say when I meet them. Some adults assume that children will never "get" the more complex aspects of my books, but in fact it's often children who read the books with the most insight.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Tiger tiger, burning bright...., December 24, 2002

By 

E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Secret Heart (Hardcover)

David Almond's fifth book is a haunting look at an unusual young boy, written beautifully and with fantastic, memorable characters. It occasionally becomes a little confusing and repetitive, but the characterizations are stunning, and overall it's a great read.

Joe Maloney is a dreamer, a shy stutterer whose mother works shifts at a bar and whose father "spun the waltzer at a fair." His teachers want him to study, but he can't. His former friend, Stanny Mole, has fallen in with a ruthless creep called Joff, and wants to show Joe how to kill -- but Joe doesn't want to. And he sees visions of a tiger prowling around, but there are no tigers where he lives.

He makes his way to the circus, which is due to shut down in a few days. There he meets an enormous wrestler, an old woman who sees into people's souls -- and Corinna, an acrobat with whom he shares a mysterious bond. These strange people will help him learn how to find his way around the people who taunt and try to mold him, and about the tiger inside him.

This may be Almond's most confusing book. It starts off in a rather colorless way, except for the interludes where Joe sees the tiger. Almond's stark prose becomes much more flowery halfway through, when Joe meets up with the circus people; it lends itself to a few genuinely nauseating interludes where we see the sort of killing that Joff urges boys to do, claiming that it will make men out of them. But there's no hamhanded moralizing in this book, thankfully. The last third is very surreal, very strange and otherworldly, but those who don't demand a concrete answer for everything in a book will be fine with that. The biggest problem is that at times it gets a little repetitive, with people shouting the same insults after Joe and Corinna, and Joe wondering for the umpteenth time whether Joff is his father.

Joe is likeable from the start, a kid who doesn't really fit anywhere and who feels pressure from all sides to be something he isn't. His patient mother is an almost saintly figure; the circus performers range from the surreal to the everyday, but all are friendly and kind, especially the blind old lady Nanty. Corinna is somewhat like Joe, except more outgoing and less sensitive to the taunts of others. And if there's a villain, it's Joff, a murdering tough who tries to mold boys to be like him, including Joe's friend Stanny (who pretty clearly doesn't believe a word coming out of his own mouth).

This is not a book for everyone -- the boundaries are very hazy and the storyline stretches into fantasy. But it's beautifully written and strangely plotted, and definitely worth the read.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not your average middle grade read, December 13, 2002

By 

Dawn Dixon - See all my reviews

This review is from: Secret Heart (Hardcover)

Misfit Joe Maloney is taunted and teased by his peers. Even his mother comments on his oddness. Destined to remain apart by strange visions no one else can see, Joe is drawn to a ragged circus that suddenly appears at the edge of town. The circus folk are as much at odds with the town folk as Joe is. Intrigued by their strangeness and mystery, Joe sinks into a world where fantasy and illusion meld with and replace reality. Joe is faced with confronting and accepting his differences, and the torture that goes with it, or joining forces with those bent on making a man of him. The juxtaposition of cruelty and compassion in this tale speak to that very nature in each of us.

It would be difficult not to recommend a book by David Almond. His lyrical writing creates fresh perspectives, thought-provoking storylines, and intriguing characterizations. While Secret Heart doesn't capture the heart of the reader with the same intensity of Skellig or Kit's Wilderness, the imagery and beauty of the language is compelling enough to recommend this book.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Dreams and ancient tales.., July 8, 2003

By 

Lynn Spencer "madamelibrarian" (Syracuse, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Secret Heart (Hardcover)

I love books that can be read on several different levels. I imagine a middle school reader could enjoy this book as a coming-of-age story. But it is also a book of great depth and beauty, as represented in one of my favorite quotes: Joe closed his eyes. He felt Nanty's hands cradling his head, and he felt how tender they were. "How can a thing like a head be held within a lady's fingers?" she whispered. "Here's dreams and memories and ancient tales that's being told and told. Here's stars that shine a billion miles away and deep dark caves and forests and Helmouth and teachers and mothers and horns of unicorns and the stripes of tigers. Here's a thing that's bigger than the world and all the worlds there ever was. And look. All held within a tent of tender bone and skin and cradled in a lady's fingers. How can this be so?"