Christopher, at fifteen, has been attending a special school for most of his life, living at home with his father, a heating contractor who works long hours. A genius at maths, he sometimes calms himself by listing prime numbers and squaring the number two in his head, and he tells us that his "record" is 2 to the 45th power.

His teacher Siobhan has been showing him ways to deal with his environment more effectively. Innocent and honest, he sees things logically and interprets the spoken word literally, unable to recognise the clues which would tell him if someone is lying, being sarcastic, or playing him for a fool.

"I find it hard to imagine things which did not happen to me," he says. He can understand similes ("[The rain] was falling so hard that it looked like white sparks") because he can see the similarities in appearance between the heavy rain and white sparks, but he cannot understand metaphors, which omit 'like' and 'as' and simply make statements, which, he feels, are not true. As he explains, "When I try …[to imagine] an apple in someone's eye, [it] doesn't have anything to do with liking someone a lot and it makes you forget what the person was talking about."

This book is gripping and very interesting. It is not the typical view of a fifteen year old boy. This is one of my favourite books.

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