Counting Stars [Hardcover]

What characterizes the Catholic imagination is the sense of the sacramental. If Catholics feel any wonder at all, it is from believing that God's grace can work through the most commonplace things and that Christ's love can shine forth from the most ordinary people. For Catholics, the invisible is just as important as the visible, if not more so. It is this which accounts for the respect Catholics give priests, the presence of icons in Catholic churches and homes, the devotions to Mary and the Saints, the belief in Angels, and the love of rich liturgy and tradition.

Almond gets this--and twists it terribly. In this book, what Catholics consider channels of grace, he portrays as instruments of doom. His characters are not blessed in their Catholicism but are punished for it, sometimes in painful, humiliating ways.

While some of the stories in this collection are a charming mix of reality and fantasy and are very vividly written, they are not enough to redeem the rest, which are a hateful and cynical sneer at all things Catholic. Embittered cradle Catholics make the worst anti-Catholics.

In the story "Counting the Stars", Almond strikes a blow at the priesthood. The priest in the tale is an idiot who believes that it is a sin to count more than a hundred stars at a time. The seminaries are not let off any more easily: in another story, a former seminarian intimates that all that he and the other young men in the seminary could ever think of was girls.

Then, in two very dark stories, Almond mocks Catholic devotions. The first of these, "Beating the Bounds", features an abused little boy; the second, "Loosa Fine", an abused and mentally retarded girl. The boy is named after St. Valentine, as he was born on St. Valentine's day--yet he does not seem to have any patron saint at all. In fact, many troubles come to him because of his name--many troubles but nary a blessing. As for the girl, she is taken to Lourdes by a group of well-meaning pilgrims (whose faith Almond paints as maudlin and immature); but what befalls her is not the prayed-for miracle but even more abuse, worse than before. She does not receive grace, only pain. This is a sneer at Lourdes, at all apparition sites, at Mary herself.

Almond leaves nothing untouched, attacking all that is sacred, from the Holy days (especially Good Friday, Black Saturday and Easter Sunday) to the sacraments (Confession in particular). Even prayer is dismissed: in "Behind the Billboards", a boy who fearfully prays the Hail Mary has his tongue slit with a knife. The main character explores New Age teaching, fully encouraged by his father and in contempt of his long-suffering mother. Not even Angels escape without being tainted with Almond's anti-Catholic bile.

As if this were not terrible enough, Almond also sprinkles some sex into the stories. Some of the references to what the characters do are so shocking that I can hardly believe they made it into a book intended for young people. Take this for example: the main character goes to the circus and meets a little girl who tells him that her mother reads fortunes by day and shows men her knickers by night; after this, he meets the girls' mother, who is indeed very motherly, and she invites him to come over later that night.

I can understand why those who know nothing about Catholicism would call this book "Catholic." The stories are dotted with Catholic details and all the characters are Catholic. Yet the truth about "Counting Stars" is that it may be the most anti-Catholic book ever to appear on YA shelves. Do not be misled.

Almond goes back to Stoneygates and looks at things through the eyes of a child -- the world is a magical, mystical place, where sadness and joy lurk around every corner. He writes of a lonely old woman who keeps her dead baby in a jar, and what happens to the lost baby after her death. He writes of a tender first love with a girl at the church. He writes of a retarded woman who claims to have been visited by the Virgin Mary, of the deaths of his parents and sister, a homeless man whose voice was stolen by a fanatical headmistress, of a crisis of faith, of a tormenting bully, of a trip into a fairground "Time Machine," a kindly but strict priest who claims that to count more than a hundred stars is blasphemy, and of angels who show him what he most longs to see.

It's impossible to tell how much of this is true, and how much is imagined. But the elements woven into the story are disarmingly real. Death, life, God, faith, suffering and love are presented in a uniquely surreal manner. His descriptions are starkly evocative; he may describe an angel merely as looking like a woman, but more perfect, and the reader will understand perfectly well what he is saying. Even though it's clear he often does not agree with some of the people in this (the strict priest, for example) Almond never treats them with scorn or mockery unless they are genuinely cruel.

It's a beautiful glimpse of what went into the creation of such modern classics as "Skellig," "Kit's Wilderness" and "Heaven Eyes." A treasure.

Either way, you are guaranteed to recognise from Almond's amazing narrative style, that he certainly is capable to capturing his own childhood experiences in a dazzling and highly spiritual way.

This collection of short stories is yet another high point in Almond's career. Coming from the man who Janni Howker calls "The Gabriel Garcia Marquez of Children's Fiction" this collection of stories will not only entertain you, they may also inspire you to explore your own past.

Once you've read these stories, read Almond's other books. Seriously, I guarantee you will not be disappointed.