This is the second Dimbleby novel I have reviewed (see previous reviews for Please Don’t Go); his new offering A Beast in Spring brings to mind a number of words revulsion, dread, sadness, innocence and loss.  Dimbleby tackles subjects that many authors probably would not, the reasons being? They cannot do it with the sensitivity and understanding that Dimbleby can.  He has the ability to make you feel revulsion and sadness, in one paragraph.

This novel is chiefly concerned with the wondrous dark nature of childhood, as much as it is a horror story, akin to the Lord of the Flies, his prose concentrates on a group of children as they grow up in a world far different to what we would want for our children.  As all adults realise death is the knowledge we all run away from; which is why we love horror, the basic nature of the books we read are concerned with death in all its glory, Dimbleby has captured a child’s view of death so clearly that as adults surely it would be better to feel that way? With no knowledge of what waits for us either at the end of a long life or down the barrel of a gun?

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