This is a compelling story, set at the start of the Second World War, shows what life is like in a mental asylum for a boy, Rowan, who is diagnosed with schizophrenia. The treatments he receives are still experimental - but nobody predicts the effect they will have on him . . .

How does a doctor examine a person's brain? They won't use any knives on me, will they?

Rowan knows he is strange.

But dangerous?

He didn't mean to scare his sister. In his right mind, he wouldn't hurt a fly. But there's a place he can go where they say they can fix his mind . . .

Beyond the bars on the window, England is at war.

Behind them, Rowan's own battle is only just beginning.

This amazing story gives a thought-provoking look at life in an asylum and the experimental treatments practised at the start of the Second World War. For Rowan, nobody could ever have predicted the effect these treatments would have . .

Hearn is skilled at conveying the place and the time, but it is in the detail of human interactions that her novel is particularly remarkable

An original story with an unusual and many-layered background

I couldn't put this book down . . . This is quite possibly the most amazing work of children's fiction I've read in the last two years . . . The characters are absolutely fantastic, stunningly realised and brought to the page with such gusto that I didn't want it to end