The Secret Heart was an ok book.The one thing that I did not like about my book is it had nothing to it and was always talking about a tiger.This book was about a boy a girl and a tiger.They were the main characters.I chose this book because it looked like a mystery so i picked it out.It was ok in some parts but most of it I did not like.I thought it was more of a grown up book. In my book they all lived in Helmouth which was a boring town that nobody or anything ever came to this town except for one when a circus came. The circus was right behind his house so Joe saw it as soon as he got up.When he was walking to school he met a girl in the circus who did the balance beam. Joe kind of likes this girl so he invited her to his house and that is all I am going to tell you. That is my book review.
I love books that can be read on several different levels. I imagine a middle school reader could enjoy this book as a coming-of-age story. But it is also a book of great depth and beauty, as represented in one of my favorite quotes: Joe closed his eyes. He felt Nanty's hands cradling his head, and he felt how tender they were. "How can a thing like a head be held within a lady's fingers?" she whispered. "Here's dreams and memories and ancient tales that's being told and told. Here's stars that shine a billion miles away and deep dark caves and forests and Helmouth and teachers and mothers and horns of unicorns and the stripes of tigers. Here's a thing that's bigger than the world and all the worlds there ever was. And look. All held within a tent of tender bone and skin and cradled in a lady's fingers. How can this be so?"
David Almond's fifth book is a haunting look at an unusual young boy, written beautifully and with fantastic, memorable characters. It occasionally becomes a little confusing and repetitive, but the characterizations are stunning, and overall it's a great read.
Joe Maloney is a dreamer, a shy stutterer whose mother works shifts at a bar and whose father "spun the waltzer at a fair." His teachers want him to study, but he can't. His former friend, Stanny Mole, has fallen in with a ruthless creep called Joff, and wants to show Joe how to kill -- but Joe doesn't want to. And he sees visions of a tiger prowling around, but there are no tigers where he lives.
He makes his way to the circus, which is due to shut down in a few days. There he meets an enormous wrestler, an old woman who sees into people's souls -- and Corinna, an acrobat with whom he shares a mysterious bond. These strange people will help him learn how to find his way around the people who taunt and try to mold him, and about the tiger inside him.
This may be Almond's most confusing book. It starts off in a rather colorless way, except for the interludes where Joe sees the tiger. Almond's stark prose becomes much more flowery halfway through, when Joe meets up with the circus people; it lends itself to a few genuinely nauseating interludes where we see the sort of killing that Joff urges boys to do, claiming that it will make men out of them. But there's no hamhanded moralizing in this book, thankfully. The last third is very surreal, very strange and otherworldly, but those who don't demand a concrete answer for everything in a book will be fine with that. The biggest problem is that at times it gets a little repetitive, with people shouting the same insults after Joe and Corinna, and Joe wondering for the umpteenth time whether Joff is his father.
Joe is likeable from the start, a kid who doesn't really fit anywhere and who feels pressure from all sides to be something he isn't. His patient mother is an almost saintly figure; the circus performers range from the surreal to the everyday, but all are friendly and kind, especially the blind old lady Nanty. Corinna is somewhat like Joe, except more outgoing and less sensitive to the taunts of others. And if there's a villain, it's Joff, a murdering tough who tries to mold boys to be like him, including Joe's friend Stanny (who pretty clearly doesn't believe a word coming out of his own mouth).
This is not a book for everyone -- the boundaries are very hazy and the storyline stretches into fantasy. But it's beautifully written and strangely plotted, and definitely worth the read.