Authors: David Almond
Heaven Eyes (21 page)
“I waited for you,” he whispered.
I tried to leave him there but he held me tight.
“It’s all right,” he said. “I know you’ve always loved me. I always knew you’d come back for me.”
“What’s your name?”
He caught his breath.
“I don’t know.” He let me go. “Tell me what my name is.”
They moved across the little hall toward each other and I turned away.
I sat with Heaven Eyes and held her hand. Mouse sat at our side and played with Squeak. Wilson worked his clay. Soon Fingers and Maxie and the others would come down to us. Outside, the day intensified.
“Was the mum of Janry Carr,” said Heaven Eyes.
“Yes. That’s right. The mum of January Carr.”
“Is a lovely mum.”
“Yes.”
We sighed and smiled. She wriggled against me. “Tell the tale of Janry Carr,” she whispered.
“Oh, it’s a wintry stormy tale,” I said.
“You’ll tell it?”
“Yes, Heaven Eyes. One day I’ll tell you the tale.”
O
NCE UPON A TIME
, when my story started, I was a tiny thing, an invisible thing, the tiniest thing in the whole wide world. I was hidden deep down in the dark inside my mum. We were in a cheap bed-and-breakfast place above the quay. My mum was beautiful, with brilliant green eyes and red hair that grew like fire around her lovely face. My dad was a sailor from a foreign trawler that had come upriver to shelter from a storm at sea. As she watched him sail away from us, my mum already felt me trembling with life inside her. She took me to a little house in St. Gabriel’s. I turned into the fishy froggy thing that kicked and swam inside her. She sang to me and whispered to me. She bought a Salvation Army crib and put pictures on the walls and prepared a Paradise for me. We lived in that Paradise for a
few short years, and then she died. It could have been a sad sad tale. All stories could be sad sad tales: the stories of my friends, January Carr, Mouse Gullane, Anna May, Wilson Cairns, and of all the others. But they are not sad tales. We have each other, and our stories mix and mingle like the twisting currents of a river. We hold each other tight as we spin and lurch across our lives. There are moments of great joy and magic. The most astounding things can lie waiting as each day dawns, as each page turns. When I turned away from January that morning and went back into the poolroom, I knew that one story was ended. It was the story of what happened when we sailed away from Whitegates, of how we met Heaven Eyes on the black Black Middens and brought her home with us. There are endings of a kind: January Carr now lives with his mum in St. Gabriel’s and he is called Gabriel Jones; Maureen tells us we are beautiful and brave and she tries to believe it; Heaven Eyes lives here with us, and we call her Anna May. We slowly slowly tell her the few things that can be known about her life. We hold her hands and tell her about the lovely family lost at sea. We have begun to decipher Grampa’s books, to disentangle his strange tale from lists of discoveries in the Black Middens, from the drawings and maps and sketches that pack the margins. The black writing takes us back and back, back to a time when the printing works was filled with work and noise, when great ships steamed on the river and men in overalls
packed the quays. Their story flows into the tale of Heaven Eyes, who was lifted by a caretaker from the Black Middens on a moony night, then into the tale of three creatures who might have been angels, might have been devils, but were probably something in between. Like all stories, it has no true end. It goes on and on and mingles with all the other stories in the world. This has just been our part of it. You might not believe it. But everything is true.
D
AVID
A
LMOND’S
debut novel,
Skellig
, was a Printz Honor Book, an
ALA
Notable Book, and a
New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Booklist
, and
School Library Journal
Best Book of the Year. In England, it also was the Whitbread Children’s Book of the Year and won the Carnegie Medal.
Kit’s Wilderness
, his second novel, was a runner-up for the Carnegie Medal and won a Smarties Silver Award.
Heaven Eyes
is David Almond’s third novel for children.
I grew up in a big family in a small steep town overlooking the River Tyne. It was a place of ancient coal mines, dark terraced streets, strange shops, new estates and wild heather hills. Our lives were filled with mysterious and unexpected events, and the place and its people have given me many of my stories. I always wanted to be a writer, though I told very few people until I was “grown up.” I write for adults as well as children. I’ve been a postman, a brush salesman, an editor and a teacher. I’ve lived by the North Sea, in inner Manchester, and in a Suffolk farmhouse, and I wrote my first stories in a remote and dilapidated Norfolk mansion.
Writing can be difficult, but sometimes it really does feel like a kind of magic. I think that stories are like living things—among the most important things in the world.
Though each of the children in
Heaven Eyes
is an orphan, Almond develops a strong sense of family throughout the novel. What role does family play in the story? According to the novel, what does it take to become a family?Names and the ability to be renamed are very important to the characters. Discuss the significance of each character’s name for his or her role in the novel. What does it mean when someone is renamed? How does it change that person’s character? What happens when Heaven Eyes discovers her true name?
Heaven Eyes constantly reveals her sleep thoughts to Erin and explains that they are separate from her waking thoughts. Is this true? How do the sleep thoughts of Heaven Eyes and the other characters relate to their waking lives? What happens when the two realms collide?
Discuss the role of death in the novel. How does death affect each of the characters? How does the children’s perception of death change from the beginning of the novel to the end? What influence do Heaven Eyes and Grampa have on that perception?
Erin and January set out in search of freedom and decide to bring Mouse along when they find him scavenging the earth for “real treasure.” Do you think January and Erin are looking only for freedom? How does their search change when they reach the Black Middens? What treasures do they find when they meet Heaven Eyes and Grampa? What do those treasures come to mean to them?
Contrast the reactions of Erin and January when they first meet Heaven Eyes. Why do you think they react so differently to her?
How are light and dark important in the novel? Who is associated with the light and who with the dark? Why do you think this is so?
The two living adult characters in the novel have different ways of relating to the past. Grampa chooses to shroud the past in secrecy, while Maureen continually asks the children in her care to reveal their memories. How do the children respond to the adults’ ways of dealing with the past? What effect do the secrets and revelations have on the children? How do the children choose to deal with the past on their own? How does it affect their self-knowledge?
As they set out to return to Whitegates, Erin notes, “The most marvelous of things could be found a few yards away, a river’s-width away. The most extraordinary things existed in our ordinary world and just waited for us to find them.” How is this statement reflected throughout the novel? How does this view of the world vary from one that Erin and January might have expressed at the beginning of the novel?
At the end of the novel, Erin explains to Maureen, “We run for freedom. … Just for freedom.” Do you think Erin, January, and Mouse find what they set out to find? Are there ways in which Heaven Eyes might represent freedom to them?
Prepared by Pat Scales, Director of Library Services, South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities, Greenville
Q. Have you always enjoyed writing? When did you know you wanted to become a writer?
A.
Yes, I’ve always loved writing. As a boy I wrote stories and sometimes stitched them into little books. When I was a baby, my mother used to take me to my uncle’s printing works, and she told me that I used to laugh and point at the printed pages streaming off the rollers—so maybe when I was just a few months old I fell in love with print. I loved our little local library, and I dreamed of seeing my books on the shelves there one day. Like most English boys, I also dreamed of being a soccer player.
Q. What do you most enjoy about writing books?
A.
Just about everything. Of course, it’s wonderful to be able to work with the imagination, to explore language and narrative, to turn a few notions and images into a full-length story, but it’s also lovely just to be able to play with paper, pens, notebooks, paper clips, computers, et cetera, et cetera. And it’s wonderful to be able to make my living now from doing something that’s so engrossing.
Q. You probably enjoyed reading as a child. Tell us about that. What were your favorite books as a teen? What do you enjoy reading now?
A.
I was a great library-goer, especially in my teens. I wasn’t particularly happy at school by then, and found most of my inspiration from the library. I loved myths and legends— especially the King Arthur stories as retold by Roger Lancelyn Green (a wonderful book that’s still in print). I enjoyed John Wyndham’s science fiction. T. Lobsang Rampa (a supposed Tibetan monk) wrote a series of books (beginning with
The Third Eye)
about his childhood in Tibet, and I thought they were marvelous. Hemingway was a major discovery for me in my midteen years.
Q. You were a teacher for a number of years. Can you tell us about your teaching experience?
A.
I became a teacher because I thought it must be the ideal job for a writer—i.e., long vacations, short days. Of course, once I began teaching I was simply so exhausted that I hardly wrote a word for three years or so. I also became fascinated by the job. I’ve taught all ages—primary, secondary, adult. For much of my career, I taught children (eleven to sixteen) with moderate learning difficulties. I wrote in the evenings, at weekends, during vacations. In 1990 I went part-time (three days per week), which was perfect: time to write and some salary to pay the mortgage. I left teaching and became a full-time writer in 1999, but I’m still involved in education—visiting schools, speaking at teachers’ conferences, working on educational panels. I suppose that my interest in education is apparent in my books.
Q. Is there a difference between the reactions of American readers and British readers to your books?
A.
There seems to be very little difference, which is very heartening.
Q. Your work has been described as being infused with magic realism. How would you define that term? What does magic realism bring to your novels?
A.
I’m often referred to as a magic realist, though like most writers I’m not too keen on being put into any particular category. I know I have been influenced by magic realists like Gabriel García Márquez, but I’m also influenced by apparently “nonmagical” writers like Raymond Carver. I don’t use magic realism in a deliberate manner. I suppose the style of my books naturally embodies the ways in which I think and the ways in which I view the world. I do
think that the world itself is pretty magical, and that if there is a miraculous world, it’s this one. It could be that magic realism is characteristic of writing from Catholic cultures, so maybe my Catholic upbringing has had an effect on my style.
Q. The Printz Award is named for Michael L. Printz, the distinguished young adult librarian. In the first two years of the presentation of this award, how does it feel to have won this prestigious honor back to back, first with
Skellig
as an Honor Book and then with
Kit’s Wilderness
as the medal winner?
A.
Awards matter. They bring particular books and genres into public view and they stimulate reading and debate. It’s great that there is this new award for writing for teenagers and young adults—a field in which so many fine books are being written. It’s marvelous for me, of course. It was a great thrill to get a phone call from across the Atlantic telling me that I’d won the honor with
Skellig
, then just a year later to get another call telling me I’d won the medal for
Kit!
And it’s a particular honor because I’m not even American. I do think that the award isn’t just for me as I am now, but it’s for the boy I was in my local library, and for the people I grew up with who gave me my language and my stories.
Q. The main characters in
Heaven Eyes
,
especially Erin Law, have dealt with loneliness and sorrow as orphans. Can you discuss what methods they use to cope with these feelings?
A.
Erin has her cardboard treasure box, which contains relics and mementos of her life with her mum, e.g., the lock of her mother’s hair, her mother’s lipstick, the photograph of them together in the garden. Erin uses these objects to work magic. She arranges them before her, puts lipstick and perfume on,
and brings her mother back, so that she’s able to talk to her again. Does this really happen, or is it all a figment of Erin’s imagination? It certainly brings Erin a great deal of comfort, and helps her to cope with life in Whitegates.
She’s also a girl who has a strong attachment to her fellow orphans. She expresses and shows her solidarity with them. She refuses to pass judgment on them. She realizes that they’re all in danger of being isolated, and she’s concerned to comfort and encourage them all. She has a healthy skepticism about the care workers who often show anything but care, and she’s scornful of many of the methods they employ.
She has an almost heroic capacity for happiness, a strong spirit that will not allow her to become downcast or depressed. She gains a great deal of strength from her friendships, especially that with January Carr. This friendship also helps January to cope with his own difficulties. He also has practical outlets for his frustrations, e.g., through planning escapes from Whitegates, and particularly through building the raft that will take them away downriver. In building the raft he’s also employing a kind of magic, which is reflected by the curse or spell that he paints across it. Like Erin, he refuses to bow down before his problems. He retains a resolute belief that his mother will come back for him.
Mouse’s magic is contained in his cracked photograph, which may contain the image of his father. He also has a powerful memento of his dad, in the tattoo scratched into his arm. Like January, Mouse respects and loves Erin Law. He also finds particular comfort in his pet mouse, Squeak. All of these children have memories that might be simply dreams, and hopes that might simply be illusions, but they are determined to explore these memories and dreams, and to share them with each other. Their journey together away from Whitegates is an act of courage and hope.
Q. Family seems to be a very important treasure in this book. What do you consider your treasures?
A.
Yes, family—both the family I grew up in and the family I’m part of now. As a writer, I suppose my treasures are imagination, memory, the world around us, which is a real treasure chest of images, language, stories, characters.
Q. What does Heaven Eyes herself represent? Is she based on someone in your life?
A.
She isn’t really based on anyone, though I suspect there are some connections with loved ones who have died. I suppose Heaven Eyes is a character who’s gone as close to death as it’s possible to go, but she’s come back again. Until Erin, January, and Mouse arrive, she’s living in a kind of half-life. The final act of bringing her back into the world of the living, of the here and now, is performed by her three new friends. They complete the process that was begun by Grampa when he rescued her from the Black Middens. She probably has connections with characters or creatures from folk and fairy tales.
Q. There are many different uses of darkness and light throughout the novel. Can you discuss what you were trying to emphasize by this contrast?
A.
The main thing I want to do is to absorb the reader into the story, so that he or she can see and experience the book’s fictional world. The primary purpose of the dark and light, then, is to help me achieve this. I hope it draws the reader in through visual effects, and through the senses. Beyond that, of course, the notions of darkness and light have many resonances that have been explored in story and myth right through history: death and life, sleeping and waking, the hidden and the exposed, the overworld and the underworld,
interior and exterior. The book is a kind of journey into the darkness, the discovery of something that has been hidden there, and then a return to light and life again.
Q. You seem to be right in touch with the feelings of the main characters. Did any of their experiences come from your own life or the lives of children you have known?
A.
I lost a parent and a sister when I was quite young, so that probably helps me to understand something of what the children are going through. I’ve also worked with children who have ended up in care homes. They’re very vulnerable, of course, and they can have huge emotional and social problems, but they often show astounding resilience and cheerfulness. Writing any book involves a leap of the imagination. You enter the minds and lives of characters who are not like you and you try to think and feel as they do.
