More dark material

If there’s one thing guaranteed to send a reviewer’s spirits plummeting, it’s opening a book and finding that the spellyng is orl rong

If there’s one thing guaranteed to send a reviewer’s spirits plummeting, it’s opening a book and finding that the spellyng is orl rong. Bugga thys 4 a larque, hee thynks (awe wurds 2 dat effec). S’enuf 2 mayk mi brayne hert.

The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean is David Almond’s first novel for adults —his children’s books have won two Whitbread Awards. However, it shares plenty of the same preoccupations as his other work: mice, small birds, angels and an air of apocalyptic gloom. At the same time, Almond is clearly doffing his hat to Russell Hoban, who also started off by writing for children before moving into adult fiction, and to Hoban’s novel Riddley Walker in particular. Both novels are written in phonetics and set in a blasted futurist world where religious belief has slipped back into a swamp of superstition.