There’s a strange sense of disengagement going on with Lou. Partly it’s because she’s in a sort of pretend-situation – acting as a member of family with people who she will leave after a year. Partly it’s her nature. She recognises it herself, and at one point says she wishes she could miss people. Later she fantasises about someone – no particular person in mind – she hasn’t seen for years walking through the doors, “so that we could have a heartbreaking reunion.” But then she realises she doesn’t feel that way about anyone. She wonders if there is a sub-species of the human race that is capable of that joy. (Significantly, she is too healthy-minded to think that there is something inhuman about herself.)

There is the constant sense of a keen thinker who is in a continual process of deciding what kind of person to be. Such concerns are heightened in a teenager – if the author chose an older protagonist it would be a more philosophical novel. Lurking in the hectic events of the story is the dangerous idea that everyone starts as an actor and grows into the part. Lou is on a path to find – not herself – but the self most likely to be successful.

Gertie, the old woman at the offender’s hostel, gives her practical advice: “Lou, you have to pretend to be somebody else for long enough to get yourself out of his mess.”

Lou reads Russian authors extensively and has scored in the top 1% of SATs. However in her private musings she never shows much trace of this intellect. My guess is that this is an authorial decision in order to keep the book marketable. It is not acceptable for the modern reader to be exposed to such reflections. Imagine the marketing manager’s reaction: slows the plot … heavy-handed … show us what she does, don’t tell us what she thinks … makes her sound pretentious.

I value it most for the irreducible insights. At one point Lou sees a mother in a mall beating a child. She walks towards the mother to intervene; but her host-parents hold her back. “There’s nothing we can do.”

The book plays it by the rules as regards pruned sentences, short paragraphs, snappy dialogue, new crisis every couple of chapters, keeping flashbacks short, ending sections with a pregnant sentence. It’s not this writing ability that impresses me and makes me love this story.