The Heavens Eye (Heaven Eyes - David Almond)

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Product:	Heaven Eyes - David Almond
Date:	13/03/02 (18 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: great read

Disadvantages: flat spots

Gr. 5?8. ?My name is Erin Law. My friends are January Carr and Mouse Gullane. This is the story of what happened when we sailed away from Whitegates that Friday night.? So begins this bizarre yet beautiful odyssey that takes Erin, January, and Mouse away from the home for ?damaged? children where they live, across the River Tyne, and into the Black Middens, an area of dilapidated, abandoned buildings; small, scurrying animals; and a thick, suffocating mud that holds many secrets.

It is also where Erin, January, and Mouse find Heaven Eyes. Pulled from the mud as a toddler by ?Grandpa,? the now-deranged watchman of a forgotten warehouse, Heaven Eyes is a dreamy, childlike creature who speaks in a syntax that is as much music as speech. Erin, January, and Mouse each become absorbed in this surreal existence in different ways, and with profound effect. Like Skellig (1999) and Kit?s Wilderness [BKL Ja 1 & 15 00], this is the sort of book that is almost impossible to categorize. Allegory? Fantasy?

Certainly Almond is one of the foremost practitioners in children?s literature of magical realism. Yet when it comes to the emotions the story contains, no book could be more true. Erin?s heart-wrenching description of her mother?s death is more haunting than any of the story?s fantastic events.

The Not every element works: sometimes ends that should have been left unraveled are too tightly tied. But, as with Almond?s other books, this is tremendously ambitious and in almost every way successful. As gritty as the mud of the Middens, as pure as the blue of Heaven?s eyes, this is a novel that will linger.

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