IN THE PAST YEAR, A number of very different authors have become fascinated by the idea of a golem — that is, a giant, man-shaped creature of clay or metal brought magically to life. Originally from Yiddish folklore, the golem did not even feature in Diana Wynne-Jones’s Tough Guide to Fantasyland, but now they are popping up everywhere. Funny, frightening, fearful, they hold a mirror up to our humanity and its botched conscience.

The latest golem, although it is never named as such, is in David Almond’s Clay. The narrator, Davie, and his best friend Geordie are bullied by the monstrous Mouldy and his gang.

When a new boy, Stephen Rose, arrives and shows that he is not afraid of Mouldy, the boys (encouraged by their priest) try to befriend him. At first Stephen seems pitiable and admirable. His father is dead, and his mother is in a lunatic asylum, so he is looked after by “Crazy Mary”, a relation who is also a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic.

Stephen does not go to school but moulds figures out of clay, and is a gifted sculptor. They show him where to get good clay, out of the pond of the abandoned garden which is their secret paradise, and think he is being “daft” when he commands his figures to stand up and walk the earth. But then he is seen to make a clay baby move, and that is only the beginning. Stephen gets Davie to steal the crumbs of a Communion wafer and a Communion wine-stained napkin to help him to make Clay, a beautiful human figure intended to murder the bullying Mouldy.

Fascinated and terrified, the “good altar boy” obeys, but when Clay comes to life there is too much of Davie in him to commit the crime.

Has Stephen, the son of a hypnotist, really acquired the God-like powers of bringing his figures to life after seeing an angel, or is it all delusion?

As always with this remarkable writer, it is very hard to tell. Like Frank Cottrell Boyce’s wonderful thriller, Millions, and Almond’s first masterpiece Skellig, this deals with the kind of territory that Catholics excel in, an imaginative no man’s land in which miracles might happen or might be the product of wishful thinking.

Davie’s confusion, his fear of the town bully, his experience of falling in love with Maria and his intimate knowledge of his home town are so convincing, so moving, that it feels as if you have a boy in your head showing you his soul.

How Almond manages to make a work of art out of the simplest words, many of them dialect, is akin to Stephen’s powers over clay, and indeed this novel is about whether God exists, creating us as Stephen creates his mysterious figures.

Prat, the boys’ teacher, is mocked for his portentous attempts to raise their spiritual awareness when he says, truly: “It is the human paradox. We are creative beings. But our passion to create goes hand in hand with our passion to destroy.”

The golem, or “creature”, becomes as mournful as Frankenstein’s monster. As he shows Clay round his home town, the love Davie feels for it is like his love for life. Yet to Stephen, “come out of the darkness and the nowtness”, Clay is a monster created to destroy.

The climax of this strange, miraculous, beautiful book will make it a classroom classic. We are such stuff as dreams are made of, but as the legend of the golem shows, we are born of dust and to dust return.

What’s more. . .

GOING POSTAL
by Terry Pratchett
Corgi; £6.99

An irresistible thief is given an unavoidable golem to keep him on the straight and narrow. For 11+

THE GOLEM’S EYE
by Jonathan Stroud
Corgi; £6.99

Second in this splendid series. The young magician Nathaniel and his djinn , Bartimeus, must defeat the golem terrorising London. For 10+

THE SCARECROW AND HIS SERVANT
by Philip Pullman
Doubleday; £10.99

A scarecrow is brought to life by a bolt of lightning, and embarks on picaresque adventures with a poor boy. Pure bliss. For 7+

THE IRON MAN
by Ted Hughes
Faber; £4.99

Mysterious space giant teams up with small boy to save the world. For 6+

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