Bound To Stay Bound

School Library Journal - 01/01/2015 Gr 9 Up—Dominic Hall is the son of a shipbuilder, living in modest conditions in mid-20th century England. As he grows up, he finds himself torn between two influences—the dreamy intellectual artist girl next door and the brutal outcast boy who seems to cultivate a darker side of Dominic's nature. His coming-of-age is marked by the ramifications of his choices between the two. The Tightrope Walkers is a tour de force. Almond's gifted prose sets readers firmly in the grim, gray-skied setting of a post-World War II British town inhabited by deeply layered and well-crafted characters. The use of a thick working-class dialect for many of the protagonists yields immersive dialogue that might have been off-putting in a lesser author's hands. Dominic's development takes place among moments of overwhelming bleakness and his experiences with the redemptive powers of human connection and art. The balance between these is precarious and realistic, and the span of years encompassed by the book flies by. The novel is by turns reminiscent of classic bildungsromans such as the Billy Elliott film, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and Stephen King's IT, yet it retains a distinctive heart and voice of its own. While instances of violence are eventually tempered, it is best suited for mature readers. An absolute must-have.—Erinn Black Salge, Saint Peter's Prep, Jersey City, NJ - Copyright 2015 Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and/or School Library Journal used with permission.

Booklist - 02/15/2015 *Starred Review* Throughout his storied literary life, David Almond has continuously returned to familiar themes and turned his inquiring eye to the pull of opposites. Delving more widely than the familiar question of how good stacks up against evil, he also is curious about choice versus chance, the razor-thin difference between angels and devils, and whether God is watching us, helping us, or baiting us. The Tightrope Walkers is no different, in that all these notes are hit upon. But while many of his books, beginning with Skellig (1999), are netted in magic realism, this coming-of-age story, rooted in reality, makes the stark choices its characters face ones that will be readily recognized by readers. Dominic Hall is born in a hovel on the banks of the Tyne, but thanks to a postwar building boom, his family moves to a council estate, a new community that throws together people who, in previous times, might not have known one another at all. Mr. Hall is shipbuilder, doing the gritty, filthy work of soldering and fitting. Next door lives the Stroud family. The mother is not seen, only heard, singing odd songs; the father works in the shipyards as well but in an office, crisply drawing plans. Their daughter, Holly, is a wonder—artistic, fearless, a faithful friend to Dominic, and the crucible for his hopes, dreams, and writings. Into the children’s Eden of art and tightrope walking—a hobby with which they become strangely enamored—slithers Vincent McAlinden, a bottom-of-the-barrel punk who often successfully hides his humanity. Yet Holly sees enough in him to paint his portrait again and again over the years, while Dom, as an early teen, is drawn to him like steel to a magnet. Vincent grooms and shapes Dom until they are shooting small animals together, kissing each other, and literally pissing on Dom’s future when they break into the house of Dom’s mother’s employer, who has always supported his endeavors. Vincent is the story’s malevolent throughline, just as the tightrope—the one project Mr. Hall and Mr. Stroud have ever collaborated on—is the symbol for the possibilities life may offer Dom and Holly. And just like life, the story doesn’t go the way you think it will. Some books stand out for their characters, others for their sense of place, and some for their stories and themes. Almond has a facility for all those elements. The two most sharply drawn characters here are Vincent, as polluted as the Tyne but a force of nature nonetheless, and, rather surprisingly, Mr. Hall. He has spent his life at the bottom, fought a war with hopes of shaping a better world for his son, and labors mightily so his family can have more. At the same time, he sees his son as soft, is baffled by Dom’s writing talents, and resents the chances they offer. Sometimes readers see this through as casual a movement as the flick of a cigarette ash. Vincent, too, is well aware of Dom’s abilities but less conflicted about what they mean. Dom is the personification of the unfairness of life, and there is only one thing to do about that: corrupt him. Vincent is one of those Heathcliff type of characters whose dark soul has tears through which goodness might slip, and yet events conspire to push away hope and happiness. Readers are left to wonder whether the cause is nature, nurture, or something more primeval and malevolent. The powerful ending brings Dom, Holly, and Vincent, now older teens, together once more in an epic scene of horror that is later followed by redemption. Can goodness come from evil? Does a flower grow out of the muck? The Tightrope Walkers was published in the UK as an adult book, and it could very well fit under a new adult designation. What that means in this instance is that both young people and older will find much to ponder. Teens will feel the events most viscerally—the brutishness, the love, the rejections. Adults, meanwhile, will bring their own world-weary self-knowledge, which cuts in its own way. Wild and reckless, heartbreaking and hopeful—this elegy on life is not to be missed. - Copyright 2015 Booklist.

Bulletin for the Center... - 04/01/2015 Dom, Holly, and Vincent show three very different faces of the experience of growing up on the shores of the river Tyne in the decades following World War II. Dom’s father is a caulker at a Newcastle shipyard, having risen just a few steps up the labor hierarchy from his father before him. Holly’s father is an open-hearted office worker who tries to reach beyond the class-based resentment of Dom’s dad. Vincent’s father is rumored to be in prison, with brutish Vincent on the fast track to follow him. The three children negotiate their relationships over the course of Dom’s account of their early lives through young adulthood. The character constellation here is very similar to that of Kit’s Wilderness (BCCB 1/00): with Holly, Dom excels in school and falls in love with tightrope walking after circus performers come to town; with Vincent he learns to shoot, steal, and smoke. Here, though, the dreamy writer and artistic girl do not pull the dark boy out of his troubled past; instead, Vincent nearly destroys both Dom and Holly in a vicious attempted murder and successful rape. In prose that reads like richly imagistic poetry, Dom sorts through what it means to walk a metaphorical tightrope, caught between social classes, between his mother’s dreams and his father’s fears, between his gentler, creative nature and his attraction to the rough camaraderie of outlaw boys and working men. The interplay between the characters and their environments results in a stunningly human and humanizing story. This is by far Almond’s best work to date, and in light of the awards he’s already accrued, that’s saying something. KC - Copyright 2015 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.