5. Do you believe that Davie is a reliable narrator? Does he actually see the fantastical things he claims to see while helping Stephen? Is there any other explanation? Use examples from the text to support your argument.
6. What do you think is the truth about Stephen’s parents? Is it the story he tells Davie on Part Three: Five through Part Three: Six? Or is it the story he tells Davie on Part Three: Twenty-three?
7. On the night of Clay’s creation, Davie prays, “Let me believe in nowt…. Let God be gone. Let the soul be nowt but anillusion…. Let nowt matter” (Part Three: One). Why do you think Davie wishes for this? Do you think this prayer has permanent effects on him?
8. On Part Three: Twelve, Prat tells his class, “Our passion to create goes hand in hand with our passion to destroy.” How do you think the story of Clay’s creation illustrates this paradox?
9. What is Stephen? Is he a misunderstood boy, or something darker and more dangerous? What moments in the story make you believe this? Which option do you think is more frightening?
10. At the end of the novel, on Part Four: Six, Crazy Mary has a vision of angels. When she asks whether Davie can see them, he considers:
Whatever she was, she saw something that I couldn’t share. I saw her trembling pointing finger. I saw rooftops, branches, twigtips, leaves. I saw the silhouettes of passing birds. And then the dazzling blue void, the gaping emptiness that stretched forever and ever.
“Yes,” I told her. “Yes, I see.”
And I lowered my head, and closed my eyes, and gazed into the shifting shadows and the darkness of my mind.
What do you think Davie is feeling here? What has he lost? Has he been permanently changed by his experience with Stephen?
—in his own words—
a conversation with
DAVID ALMOND
a conversation with david almond
Q. What made you want to write a novel that deals with the themes Clay addresses: good and evil, faith and disbelief, the dual nature of man?
A. I didn’t really decide to write about those things. I wanted to write about ordinary kids in an ordinary place doing extraordinary things. The deeper implications of what they were up to emerged as I wrote the book. In many ways, a writer doesn’t really decide what he writes about. His subjects and themes come and get him.
Q. You’ve said before that the people and places you encountered during your childhood have inspired many of your stories. Is your background similar to Davie’s?
A. Yes, very similar. I am not Davie, though I enjoyed playing with the notion that I might be. I grew up in the same town, Felling-on-Tyne. Many of the places named in the book, especially during Davie’s walk with Clay, are real places. I was an altar boy at a church called St. Patrick’s. I had friends like Geordie and Maria. I knew a couple of women who were a bit like Crazy Mary. But many of the places and people are imaginary. I love working with a blend of the real and the imagined.
Q. Have your feelings about faith and religion changed as you’ve gotten older, or do you think you retain the same ideas you had at Davie’s age?
A. I guess I’m forever working out my feelings about many things, including faith and religion. When I was a boy, I suppose I thought that adults arrived at settled ideas about the world, about human existence, about religion. It’s not true, of course. There are no final answers, and we keep on searching and questioning and being amazed and mystified. Maybe writing fiction is my way of doing this.
Q. Geordie tells Davie on Part One: Eight, “You’re a simpleton…. You do not see the wickedness that’sin the world!” Do you think Davie should be less trusting of Stephen?
A. It’s tempting to say yes, Davie should have been more suspicious. But in the process of arriving at his new knowledge about the world, Davie has been on a major journey of emotional, intellectual, spiritual exploration. What Stephen describes as being a “simpleton” is really the description of a boy who is uncertain, who is growing quickly, and who is simply fascinated by the world and its possibility.
Q. Prat’s lectures on art run throughout the novel. What is the connection between art and what happens to Davie?
A. There are so many connections, and I enjoyed writing about Prat, and allowing him to explore the nature of human creativity. Davie and Stephen’s creation of Clay is maybe the ultimate artistic act—they create something that is not only beautiful but that comes to life. In doing this they challenge the idea that there can be only one creator. The artist becomes a kind of God.
Q. And Maria? She’s the only character Davie tells the whole story to, and she believes him without hesitation. Why did you include Maria in the story?
A. Maria is outside of the Stephen/Davie/Mouldy/Clay axis, and so has a kind of objectivity. Davie tells her the tale to test out its validity, also to get the tale out into the “real” world. He’s also learning a lot about the nature of love and friendship. He has a closeness to Maria that is of course very different from his closeness to Geordie. He’s falling for her, and he’s also found a friend with whom he can discuss deeper, more interesting subjects than he can with Geordie and his old boy mates.
Q. What is Stephen Rose, in your mind? Is he just a misunderstood child, as Father O’Mahoney claims: “A boy with problems. There but for the grace of God” (Part Four: Three). Or is he true evil?
A. When I began the book, and as I wrote the early chapters, I think I did share Father O’Mahoney’s view of Stephen. I thought he’d be “tamed,” that he’d find a way to be included in the community. I thought that Davie, Geordie, Maria, Father O’Mahoney, would find the goodness in him and draw it out. And I thought that part of my job as the writer would be to discover his hidden goodness too. Well, he evaded all of us. As I wrote on, I had to take many deep breaths and recognize that he was in many ways beyond salvation. He goes off at the end, unredeemed, maybe to create havoc elsewhere. Evil? It’s not really a word I like, but he’s certainly not a force for good.
Q. Why do you think Stephen needs Davie to create Clay? He seems fairly powerful on his own.
A. I don’t think that he really does need Davie to create Clay. But he wants to tempt and to disillusion and to corrupt Davie. And he wants to test out and to demonstrate his own wicked powers.
Q. To what extent do you think Davie willingly helps Stephen? And to what extent is he being manipulated? Does Davie have any control over his fate?
A. At any moment, Davie could in theory withdraw from it all and tell Stephen to get lost, but I think he is just too fascinated by the possibilities that are presented by Stephen. Yes, he is manipulated and at times maybe hypnotized, and at times he is terrified by what’s going on, but he’s an independent human being. He wants to explore the darkness.
Q. At the end of the novel, Davie seems to recognize that he has lost something. How do you think the experience has changed him?
A. Yes, I think he’s changed massively. He is less secure in his faith. He has moved beyond his old mates with their banter and their feuds. He has been closely involved in the killing of another boy. He has helped to create a living creature, which he has also helped to destroy. He has a deeper knowledge of himself and the world, but that knowledge is accompanied by lots of disillusion. He is maybe lonelier. But he’s ready to move on. He’s growing up fast, and he’s falling in love with Maria.
Q. Do you think Davie will ever recover completely?
A. We go through lots of crises and recoveries all through life. It’s amazing what we can go through, and what we can survive. Yes, he’ll recover, he’ll keep on growing up, and he has a strong mind and a good heart so he’ll be fine. But the effects of his involvement with Stephen and Clay will be with him for the rest of his life.
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ALSO BY DAVID ALMOND
Skellig
Kit’s Wilderness
Heaven Eyes
Counting Stars
Secret Heart
The Fire-Eaters
Two Plays
Kate, the Cat and the Moon
Published by Delacorte Press an imprint of Random House Children’s Books a division of Random House, Inc. New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2006 by David Almond
Originally published in Great Britian in 2005 by Hadder Children’s Books
All rights reserved.
Delacorte Press and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
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