The True Tale of the Monster Billy Dean

Billy Dean is hidden away. He knows only his mother and father. She is a hairdresser, young and beautiful. He is a priest, smelling of cigarettes and candles, who visits rarely to impart strange wisdom and tell stories. As Billy grows up he remains locked away, a secret child inhabiting his own private world. His father tells him he can heal, that he was born on a terrible day of reckoning and that this might mean something. But then the day arrives when his father stops coming. And Billy Dean's mother says it is time to go out and face the world . . . 'Dramatically and emotionally suspenseful, vividly drawn and wonderfully well paced. A master storyteller.' Guardian 'Profound and troubling, full of scenes that tear the heart between revulsion and compassion.' Daily Telegraph 'A Tyneside Dylan Thomas. It is impossible not to be swept up in the power of Almond's storytelling.' Sunday Telegraph 'Strange, hypnotic. A writer of visionary, Blakean intensity.' The Times 'A mystical world where nothing is what it seems.' Daily Mail