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Article: The Fire-Eaters.(Fiction and Poetry Award Winner)(by David Almond)
- Article from:
- The Horn Book Magazine
- Article date:
- January 1, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Horn Book, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The Fire-Eaters by David Almond, published by Delacorte Press
David Almond sets The Fire-Eaters in 1962, when the world is on the brink of annihilation during the Cuban missile crisis. Narrator Bobby Burns, himself poised on the threshold of adolescence, lives in the shadow of this threat in a working-class coastal village in northern England. Bobby begins and ends his story with the fire-eater McNulty, a tortured, itinerant street performer, whose mind was destroyed in a previous war. Fear of another world war heightens Bobby's awareness of life's fragile beauty and intense pain; to Bobby, McNulty seems to embody the anguish and madness of the world. Bobby's love ...