THE LEAST TROUBLING CHILD: A Novel
"The first thing they tell you is that you were found."
Jem has lived at the Halloway Institute for as long as he can remember, which is not as long as you would think. He knows there are four staircases and which one is best. He knows the clocks in the corridors disagree and that nobody has ever corrected them. He knows that when a child is placed with a family, everybody claps.
He is the cleverest child in the building, and he has never once been any trouble.
Then a small girl arrives who will not speak for eleven days. Jem is told to bring her on, and he does it the only way he knows how, which is patiently. She learns to write. She gets better at it than he is.
And then the class is set an ordinary exercise, one page about a day in your life next year, and she writes about a road, and a dog with a stupid name, and water she has never seen.
A fortnight later she is gone, and the only thing anybody will tell him is that she has been placed with a family.
What Jem does about that will take him the rest of his life.
The Least Troubling Child is a novel about captivity, about the people who are kind to you inside it, and about what it costs to be understood by someone who cannot save you.
Read it once for the story. Read it again and it is a different book, with the same words.
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