No and Me

No wonder this young adult novel is already a bestseller in France and Italy. It ought to be a gruelling read, but isn’t – not because it fudges any of the painful issues that it covers, but because of the exceptional mind and personality of its narrator, 13-year-old Lou. Lou is an outsider. Because she has an IQ of 160, she has been promoted to a school class of 15-year-olds and is a silent oddity nicknamed ‘Brains’. Her only friend is 17-year-old Lucas, who conversely has been kept back two years for idleness and under-achievement. Home is no refuge either. When Lou was eight her mother lost a much-wanted second baby, and has slid into extreme depression. Lou’s admirable father copes, but she sometimes hears him crying in the bathroom.

Into Lou’s life comes 18-year-old No, whose plight is far worse. Lou chooses homelessness as her topic for a classroom presentation, and needs to interview a homeless girl. This is how she strikes up a difficult, unlikely but intimate relationship with No, and even manages eventually to persuade her parents to take No in. After some early success this arrangement collapses, because of No’s alcohol and drug habits, but not before her arrival has unexpectedly set Lou’s mother on the path to recovery. In conspiracy with Lucas, Lou still secretly fights to save No. They fail, but a by-product of their generous and humane struggle is the end of their own outsider status.

Lou is too intelligent to miss the implications of all this. Life is inherently unfair, and has no logic or hidden meaning. People slide from home to homelessness with treacherous ease. Lou sees the endemic violence, not just physical, that life’s routine surface covers. And yet life can also be redemptive. Not only does her mother recover, but Lou’s immature body finally catches up with her extraordinary mind, resolving the developmental incoherence of the gifted child. In this compelling and engrossing story of life’s random pain and happiness, Lou’s shining and adventurous intellect is itself a source of buoyancy and pleasure. This is an admirable and inspiriting novel for teenage readers: and the adults for whom it is simultaneously published.