There are many messages to be found in the midst of this book. The book is about a family of four. Neel and June are the parents and they live in a compound in the woods with five cottages that Neel uses as a
private school to practice his hypotheses of early-childhood education.
The school is a surprising success, but when June gives birth to two children,
Neel shuts it down to work
out his theories on his offspring. Of course, the more he chides June for teaching their
children to read, sing, play instruments and do math, the more he
himself instructs them, which leaves them damages and vulnerable.
The two children are Ava, who tells most of
the story, and Fred, two years younger and suffering from an autism-spectrum disorder that leave him mute and sucking his thumb well into adulthood. If he were enrolled in the
public school system, he’d be evaluated but instead he is left to the devices of Ava and a girl who's family moves into the compound who perpetrates mean girl games upon Fred that he comes to see as normal play, much to his undoing.
The
novel moves on two tracks. As it opens, Ava is happily married, but
Fred is a vagrant, and he’s been arrested in connection with the death
of a 12-year-old boy. Ava hasn’t seen
him in two years, but she journeys to
see what she can do for him. Still with almost no words to use, Fred has been given over to handyman/drug
dealer Dave and his pal Umberto,
who is all mindless evil (and will appear in a sequel. Families who live with a challenged child know what it is to be awake at night, tormented by what
will happen when they die and their loved one is left alone. That’s what
this novel is about.
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