Synopsis: “It’s easy. Running away from Whitegates. Erin and her running-away friend January do it all the time. But this time they’re going downriver. This time they might never come back. They’re looking for a tiny corner of paradise. How could they imagine that what they’d find there would be Heaven Eyes? Heaven Eyes. This girl who should have drowned at sea, this girl rescued from the mud. This girl with a secret history only Grampa knows. And he’s not telling…

Review: First published in 2000, ‘Heaven Eyes’ is a challenging work, in which the reader, like the characters, must complete the picture through scraps of information found and filtered through various sources. Erin, January, and Mouse live at a children’s home called Whitegates. All of them have been ‘damaged’ by the death or abandonment of their parents. Periodically, they run away, just for a taste of freedom. This time, when they run away, they take a raft down the Tyne. Eventually the raft gets stuck in a mudflat called the Black Middens, and they have to abandon it. On the bank they encounter the mysterious Heaven Eyes, a pale little girl with intense blue eyes and webbed fingers. She leads them to her secret home in a disused printing works, and introduces them to ‘Grampa’, a sometimes-gentle, sometimes-terrifying, filthy, apparently psychotic man who is fiercely protective of her. Everyone in this book, child and adult, yearns to know who they are and where they belong. The children’s longing for their dead or absent families, and the impact this has had on their lives is powerfully and poignantly rendered. Like the ‘treasures’ Grampa and Mouse dig out of the river mud, these children are lost, but as Almond makes clear, what’s lost can be found.

The importance of naming and stories is a recurring theme; particularly the importance of knowing one’s own story. In both the children’s home and the printing works, people’s life stories are written down, cobbled together with equal parts accuracy, conjecture, and wishful thinking. Language and repetition are powerful tools in ‘Heaven Eyes’: “strong as strong”, “dark as dark”, “still as still”. Characters are both separated and joined by their ways of speaking, and speech is used to reinforce meaning.

‘Heaven Eyes’ is a compelling read, at times edging into mystical realism. The ending is left open, with few loose ends neatly tied up; it is for the reader to decide whether this is fitting or satisfying. Its unflinching depiction of loss, pain, friendship and love provides much food for thought, and will stay with the reader for a long time.

2008-02-29