The 16-year-old narrator of this dreamy and beguiling novel has been sent to a remote boarding school where they practise ‘torture by nutrition’. On a cross-country run one day he meets a young hermit called Finn. Finn’s birth was never registered, so, as he says, he doesn’t exist. And that’s the attraction. The narrator is not just drawn to him as a solitary friend in this barren place; he wants to be him. Through their unlikely friendship, the narrator begins to understand what he calls ‘the riveting nature of my self-pity’. Written with an insight that’s rare in young adult fiction. Age 14+
