Clay is a sinister story about a boy called Davie who lives with his family in the northern catholic town of Felling. He lives a typical life for a teenager in the sixties. He has a girlfriend called Maria and his best friend is called Geordie. At the start of the book the only problem with life is the constant war being waged with Martin Mould’s gang. Then a new boy arrives. His name is Stephen Rose. Stephen is on odd boy with a vague history. He went to a catholic boarding school to train to become a priest but was expelled. When he got home his father died and his mother went mad. He was sent to live with his aunt ‘crazy Mary’, who lives in Felling, but then ominous things start to happen…

I have only read one other of David Almond’s books, Kit’s Wilderness, and it was very similar in the mysterious aspect. In this book Almond questions our views on religion.

The book is written in large font and has an appealing cover. It proved a quick and easy read but at points I had to slow down to avoid losing the plot. One of the reasons that it was confusing at points was the way that all the dialogue was written so I was perplexed when the words ‘nowt’ and ‘aye’ appeared. I had learnt by the end of the book to imagine that everyone was speaking in a northern accent and this made the book far more logical.

Another problem I had with the book was that there were a lot of inconsistencies in the description of characters. For instance we were told about what Stephen Rose smelled like but we did not even know what Davie looked like. I was also forced to re-read the book find out details like the dates which were only mentioned once in the entire book.

 Overall I thought that this was a read that kept me interested but lacked enough detail so I give it five out of ten.