At first, the voices were brilliant. Einstein helped him make sense of the universe. Hitchens taught him how to be himself. But then came Carl. And Carl said things that made Avery’s skin crawl.
Sixteen-year-old Avery is a gifted boy with a mind that never sleeps and a voice that won’t shut up. When a psychotic break tears through his world, he finds himself sectioned under the Mental Health Act and plunged into the fluorescent quiet of an adolescent psychiatric ward.
There, recovery isn’t a montage. It’s slow mornings, bitter tea, and the quiet, accidental friendship of a boy who smells like sadness and lines up raisins at breakfast.
Told with raw grace and biting clarity, this is not a story about being fixed. It’s about what happens when someone finally stays.
For readers of It’s Kind of a Funny Story, Perks of Being a Wallflower, and A Little Life, this is a fierce, tender novel about madness, shame, chosen family, and how love can survive even when language breaks down.