The Child Who
- Simon Lelic
- Sep 1, 2017
- 1 min read
This is a really good story of a lawyer defending a boy who has committed the worst of adult crimes – murder. I haven't read any of Lelic’s novels before and found his style of writing very modern and, at times, leaves the ends of many sentences unfinished and/or to the imagination. Not particularly off-putting, just took a bit of getting used to.
His characters are well defined and believable and Lelic realistically shows the impact of a child’s thoughtless and out of control actions against a fellow pupil which results in her death. The story is told from the perspective of Leo, the lawyer defending Daniel, the alleged murderer, and how his defence of Daniel affects, and eventually devastates, his family and home life. The unexpected part of the story is that the dead girl’s family and the impact on them is barely mentioned. The front cover of the book says that ‘for two families nothing will ever be the same again’ and this is certainly true except that the two families are the murderer’s and the lawyer’s, not the murdered girl’s family. I suppose it’s quite brave and unusual to take this route with the story rather than the sympathy and grief usually told from the point of view of the victim’s family.
The story itself is well put together and he succeeds to a certain extent in making the reader have sympathy for the murderer, but we never lose sight of the fact that the boy has committed an heinous and violent crime. A good book and well worth reading.