12/1/2015BookFilter | Evernote Web https://www.evernote.com/Home.action#n=b338ea53-1ccf-4bc0-bca7-70b15a7844c1&ses=4&sh=2&sds=5&1/3HomeTop Picks: All BooksThe Tightrope Walkers MoreThe Tightrope Walkersby David AlmondPrice: $17.99(Hardcover)Published: March 24, 2015Rating: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast)From the Publisher: International award winner David Almonddraws on memories of his early years in Tyneside, England,for a moving coming-of-age novel, masterfully told.A gentle visionary coming of age in the shadow of the shipyards ofnorthern England, Dominic Hall is torn between extremes.</p><p> On theone hand, he craves the freedom he feels when he steals awaywith the eccentric girl artist next door, Holly Stroud—his first andabiding love—to balance above the earth on a makeshift tightrope.With Holly, Dom dreams of a life different in every way from hisshipbuilder dad’s, a life fashioned of words and images and story.On the other hand, he finds himself irresistibly drawn to the brutalcharms of Vincent McAlinden, a complex bully who awakenssomething wild and reckless and killing in Dom.</p><p> In a raw andbeautifully crafted bildungsroman, David Almond reveals…Rate This Book|Rate/ReviewAdd To BookshelfGet This Book Go to your preferred retailer, click to choose a format and you' ll be taken directly to their site whereyou can get this book.BookFilter12/1/2015BookFilter | Evernote Web https://www.evernote.com/Home.action#n=b338ea53-1ccf-4bc0-bca7-70b15a7844c1&ses=4&sh=2&sds=5&2/3 Personalize / Add More ChoicesWhat We SayLet's call "The Tightrope Walkers" a coming-of-age story but that's what you call a book about young people when it'sreally good.</p><p> Go to a bookstore and you might find it comfortably nestled in the Young Adult section, where it belongs.But it also belongs any new work of fiction for writer David Almond has delivered a masterful tale inspired by hischildhood in northern England in the sort of shipbuilding town Sting eulogized in his musical "The Last Ship." There'smusic in the dialogue of our hero Dominic, a clever lad soaking up words and experiences with youthful joy, whetherit's the artistic girl Holly across the street, the dangerous and mercurial Vincent or the looming maw of the shipyardwhich threatens to swallow him up before this boy with a taste for poetry and language can let out the creativitybursting out of him.</p><p> It's colorful, funny, immediate and scary.</p><p> Though the usual things happen: first love, pettytransgressions, cruel teachers and loving ones, death, danger and the like, I was genuinely uncertain how Dominic --and especially the seemingly doomed Vincent -- might turn out.</p><p> Poetry, rock n roll, free love, and the Sixties ingeneral pop in, but it's all very much filtered through the almost isolated world Dominic lives in.</p><p> It's like they try andrecreate the ideas and happenings taking place somewhere far far away.</p><p> From a mute tramp to a mad mothersinging away in her upstairs bedroom to the tightrope walking that is a childhood fancy and yet somehow more, thisis a colorful and vivid world.</p><p> Very much in the tradition of other coming of age tales, it's also specific and uniqueenough to make the story of growing up seem fresh and remarkable all over again.</p><p> One of the best books of theyear, wherever you find it stocked on the shelves. -- Michael GiltzLessWhat Others SayA tour de force. ...</p><p> The novel is by turns reminiscent of classic bildungsromans such as the Billy Elliott film, HarperLee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Stephen King’s IT, yet it retains a distinctive heart and voice of its own. ...</p><p> Anabsolute must-have.—School Library Journal (starred review)The award-winning Almond poetically plumbs the depths of his 1950s and '60s childhood to explore themes ofviolence, war, God, creativity, beauty, death, art, the soul, our animal selves, whether we ever grow up or can reallyknow each other…in short, life.—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)In a powerfully realistic bildungsroman from award-winning author Almond (The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean),Dominic Hall, the son of a working man from Newcastle, seems destined for greater success than was possible forhis ill-educated and often angry father....</p><p> Almond’s characteristic penetrating writing and finely drawn characters areon full display in a story more fully grounded in a specific and important historical moment than anything he haspublished heretofore.—Publishers Weekly (starred review)Some books stand out for their characters, others for their…MoreWhat You Say
