THE THIEF OF ALWAYS by Clive Barker.

Some books stick in the mind. There are quite a few examples of children’s fiction that I have enjoyed, but don’t have on my shelves, that I have read once only, out loud, in half-hour chunks over a long series of evenings to one or other of my children, when they were young enough to be read to sleep. These books were borrowed from our local library, which has since replenished its stock and thrown out or sold off most of the tattered paperbacks we enjoyed back in the Nineties. One such read was THE THIEF OF ALWAYS by Clive Barker. This book takes reversal as its theme, to dark and twisted effect. There’s a grinning villain who employs the desperate patter of a game show host. There’s a pond-full of huge fish, melancholy and ponderous and somehow utterly horrifying. Most disturbing of all, perhaps, the story demonstrates a galling truth; if your life becomes an endless round of thoughtless pleasure, and it’s springtime in the morning and Christmas every night, eventually even the most dedicated fun-seeker will come to the uncomfortable conclusion that something just isn’t right. And before reaching, at last, a genuinely happy resolution, the main character, 10-year old Harvey Swick, is put through the ultimate desolation. It’s what you might call a Rip Van Winkle moment, returning to a world that has moved on and left you far behind. This is a fear that I’m sure must have deep-seated roots in the human psyche. It sticks in the mind.