He wants to be angels and you make him owls...

There was a time last autumn when I seemed to be surrounded by David Almond's Skellig. durham_rambler was reading the book, preparing to accompany Gail-Nina to the opera at the Sage, the Graphic Novels Reading Group was reading the book as part of some city-wide project. I had read the book years ago, and not particularly enjoyed it, and I don't like opera at all, so I tried to escape a re-reread. Instead I read The Savage, David Almond's much more recent collaboration with Dave McKean; but even this turned me back towards the earlier book: a boy struggling with grief in the family turns to a vivid secret life in which the boundaries of the real and the imagined are denied, and in which a feral being who does not speak helps him to deal with his own unspoken, unspeakable feelings. I know when I'm beaten; I re-read Skellig.

( And it's still not for me. But I can see why it might work as opera (with the caveat that I may be all wrong about opera, which is also not for me). )

On a re-read, in short, Skellig is still not for me; and I'm happy to admit that this is probably because I'm not for Skellig, either.