One of those books with creative spelling from a self-taught narrator. I kept waiting for things to happen -- for there to be a journey other than the internal one, for there to an adventure, or an unexpected twist. It's not that kind of book, and I found it rather boring in a literary fiction sort of way. As a depiction of a miracle child after an apocalypse it feels very authentic, just not very interesting. ( )

Another which should have 3.5 stars. I did enjoy it very much but my attention wandered towards the end so I can't quite give it 4. The curious spelling gave me no trouble but offered an odd conflict between the words on the page which gained an interesting oddity - and the words heard in my head, which by contrast seemed very ordinary. I first encountered David Almond's work as a reading by the author and I always 'hear' his books in a way I don't do with others - so sadly the ordinary heard words won out in the end over the oddness of the written word. ( )

I wanted to like this and I really thought some elements were great until the last 50 pages...it just fell flat for me and I'm not sure there was a real meaning to the story as a whole...which is sad because I generally think David Almond does that so well. ( )

A gripping, haunting story. Dark, disturbing, remarkable. Reminds me a bit of Adam Rapp's fiction and Emma Donoghue's Room. ( )

The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean is presented as the journal of a boy who’s been shut away from a post-apocalyptic world his entire life. He lives blissfully unaware of the wholesale destruction and unending war that exists just beyond the threshold of the one little room he’s been forced to occupy since his birth on the first night of the disaster. The first thing that’s immediately obvious is that he’s also never been taught to read or write properly.

I’ll admit that when I started reading this one, the deliberate misspellings made it seem extremely challenging, not to mention potentially unpleasant, to slog through. However, it’s all written phonetically, so I was able to pick up on the nuances of Billy’s unique phraseology fairly quickly.

Turns out, the misspellings were the least of my issues with the story.

The novel is chockfull of very unsubtle religious overtones. Despite the fact that I’m an atheist, I’m often surprisingly moved by writing with a spiritual bent, particularly when dealing with the subject of death or dying. As a matter of fact, Marilynne Robinson, whose work is nothing if not profoundly steeped in her Christian beliefs, is my favorite author. Unfortunately, Almond’s work is more along the lines of Matrix Revolutions than Gilead - it slams the reader over the head with its holy cudgel. I found the main character’s attitude toward animals especially disturbing, since the author seems to want to set him up as some kind of Frances of Assisi, while at the same time have him expounding on the virtues of animals who sacrifice their lives so mankind can eat sausages or make some useless [but supposedly symbolic] object like a dead mouse with amputated bird wings grafted onto its back. Almond seems to want to eat his cake and have it too in this regard.

As science fiction, the story seemed filled with holes as well. Although SF is hardly my métier (and I would certainly forgive a well-written story almost anything), I couldn’t really understand how the town Billy lives in, Blinkbonny, could be the reduced nearly to rubble, yet miraculously still have access to plumbing, electricity and groceries? What exactly is going on with the rest of the world? Why is it suggested that Blinkbonny is so cut off from everything else? Don’t delivery trucks come into town regularly with supplies? Where does the butcher get the slaughtered farm animals? Why do they still use currency? I wouldn’t have minded so much except that the entire story is told in the form of this melodramatic mumbo-jumbo that suggests a state of affairs that can’t possibly be accurate.

Lastly, I found the main character to be somewhat twee and annoying (particularly when his real age is revealed somewhere near the middle of the story). The author was working too hard on selling him as a modern-day, dystopian Messiah and his labor showed. There wasn’t anything particularly organic about the characterization.

And not for anything, but there’s a throwaway line near the end of the story that suggests his beloved mother is working as a prostitute. Did I read that correctly? Maybe little Billy should’ve saved some of those “coyns” he earned in the middle of the story.

Oh snap, not for me. ( )