The Falling Boy

There are at least two falling boys in this new novel from David Almond. The first appears in silhouette on the danger sign as Joff approaches the ruined Chapel of Doom above his village. The second is Joff himself, on the verge of secondary school, tumbling and flailing into a pit of confusion and despair as his beloved dad (perhaps a third falling boy?) undergoes treatment for cancer. If you have read any of Almond’s novels before, you might know how this might work out. In the beginning, Joff feels desperately alone, apart, perhaps, from Jet, his dog. But gradually, beginning with the love of his mum and dad, a healing community builds around him. There is the new girl, Dawn, singing and writing, recording their lives and adventures as they climb, by degrees, towards the Chapel of Doom together, the place of dark and fear, but also challenge and adventure, that they will turn to light and celebration. Then the chorus of other children, including one of Joff’s oldest friends, now enemy, due to be friends again. The old butcher, Basil Montgomery Malone, who has decided to hang up his cleaver so that ‘there will be no more butchered beautiful beasts in this shop window’ and Dawn’s mum who is teaching Basil to sing. Well, you might know how it might go, but there’s only one writer for children who can do this. Once more, Almond expertly walks the tight-rope between the ordinary and the transcendent, where repetition becomes ritual; and past, present and future are reconnected in community; where marmalade becomes a jar of full of light. ‘Then all of us will be here on earth…and all of us will be in Heaven, all at the very same time,’ as Dawn tells Joff, when they contemplate their work in the chapel. Listen to the refrains of love and reassurance that accompany Joff’s journey, like a secular liturgy: ‘What a lad we have here,’ ‘You’re growing so fast, Joff; What a lad you are… What a lovely lad’; ‘You’ve been an inspiration to me, Joffy Johnson’; ‘It isn’t easy for you, is it. But you keep on. I’m proud of you’; and ‘Be bold, my lovely son…These days will never come again.’ And there are those shafts of sun moments: Dawn’s mum singing to a gathering crowd in the butcher’s shop where her voice becomes the voice of the universe singing. This is hardly the first time Almond has worked his peculiar magic, but I am not sure he has done it any better and that’s enough for any reader.