Buy the hardback from Amazon UK
Junior
Macmillan
Paperback £5.99
ISBN: 0330433318
Reviewed by Linda Kempton
[Armadillo 6.4 Winter 2004]
Damien, our endearing year-five hero, is obsessed with saints and can tell you the life history, mode of death and saintly speciality of any saint you care to mention. Anthony, his year-six older brother, warns him that his obsession might single him out as odd at their new primary school. But Damien desperately wants to be good, indeed not just good, but excellent; for being good might avert some terrible tragedy, such as that which has already befallen the brothers in the recent death of their mother.
So Damien looks for as many ways of being good as he can possibly find, including a bit of saintly self-mortification in the shape of a sprig of holly under his shirt. When a bag of money comes flying out of the air it seems to Damien that God has noticed his attempts at excellence and has chosen to reward him - to the tune of £229,370. It's only later he realizes that the money's provenance is far from godly and someone most definitely does not have his best interests at heart.
Damien doesn't have much of a problem with keeping the money; after all, if God sent it then He clearly intended Damien to have it. He does have a problem though, with spending it all in time, for Britain is about to convert to the Euro and pounds sterling have only a couple of weeks or so left in circulation. He can't bank it, buy things off the internet or make any large purchases because he's a child and doesn't have a credit card or credibility. Being Damien he wants to do good with it, but even this has its problems; when he puts three thousand pounds into a charity collection at school, questions, of course, are asked. And then there's the problem of the inflationary effect of his cash on the playground economy. The other children soon realize he's loaded and the simplest transactions come to involve tenners, twenties and hundreds. The whole school learns the lesson that in this sort of economic climate, money is devalued, in more ways than one.
But this isn't just a book about a boy finding loads of money and the joys and tribulations of trying to spend it. It's also about poverty and wealth, about what money really means to those who have it and those who don't. It's also about grief and loss and striving to do your best in a world that doesn't seem to have done its best by you. It's an uplifting, poignant book and when two or three of Damien's beloved saints actually appear to him, then nothing could seem more appropriate. Indeed Damien is very matter of fact about their appearances and recognizes each saint immediately: 'St Francis of Assisi (1181-1226)?' is his response to this particular saint.
Damien learns a lot about life, himself and other people and by the end of the book we have that sense of having taken a completely satisfying fictional journey where things and people have changed and developed. Two small carps though: who decided to include photographs from the film in the middle of the book? Failing yet again in deferred gratification, I looked at the pictures before I started the book; and they give away huge chunks of the story. I'm not someone who reads the last page first and I found this extremely irritating. My other carp is St. Peter's language. Anything that pulls you up short in a story and jerks you away from its spell surely has to be a bad thing. St Peter talking about the five thousand: '...every single bastard one of them had food with them...' certainly broke the spell for me. This novelization of a film script was shortlisted for the Guardian Children's Fiction award, so I can only assume the shortlisters didn't share my reservation. I must end on a positive note though, because this is such a good book and one with which most junior fiction readers will completely engage.