Clay is a book about two boys called Davie and Geordie who live in Felling, a small Catholic town near Newcastle. It’s fairly peaceful apart from the occasional fights they get into with a neighbouring Protestant town. Then one day, a new boy moves in with a local woman they call Crazy Mary. He looks weird and the closer they get to him, his strange powers with making clay models become very clear. He has something planned for Davie, but what is it? Is he being ordered around by angels, or is he just mentally disturbed?

Previous to this, the only one of the Carnegie books I have read is Tamar, and compared to that this is one of the easiest reads I’ve ever had. It is fantastically simple and easy to read apart from the irritating northern slang: ‘Aye’ and ‘Nowt’. The book is about 300 pages long, with a very thin plot. It may be very easy to read, but you probably wouldn’t want to. The characterisation is poor; I’ve finished it, but I don’t know what most of the characters look like or even how old most of them are. I don’t even know when it is set. The dialogue is not great either. It’s not very well written. It’s rather disappointing.

I wouldn’t recommend this book to very many people at all. However it is a very easy read. Perhaps it could be used to fill a rainy afternoon when you’ve exhausted all of your other books. Overall, it deserves only a 5/10.