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A boy runs across a busy road.
His father smacks him.
A passer-by intervenes …
When Billy Wright runs across a busy road, his world is altered irreversibly, even though he doesn’t realise it at the time.
Because a passer-by has stopped to watch the scene. She has seen Billy’s father catch up with him and smack him. Within an hour she has informed social services, plunging the family into a living nightmare which begins with a social worker’s visit and escalates through a series of misunderstandings until the family is threatened to its core.
What I Did is a powerful novel about the unseen consequences of a split second decision, about a childhood interrupted and the lengths we go to to protect the ones we love. It is frequently heartbreaking, blackly funny, and utterly compelling.
His father smacks him.
A passer-by intervenes …
When Billy Wright runs across a busy road, his world is altered irreversibly, even though he doesn’t realise it at the time.
Because a passer-by has stopped to watch the scene. She has seen Billy’s father catch up with him and smack him. Within an hour she has informed social services, plunging the family into a living nightmare which begins with a social worker’s visit and escalates through a series of misunderstandings until the family is threatened to its core.
What I Did is a powerful novel about the unseen consequences of a split second decision, about a childhood interrupted and the lengths we go to to protect the ones we love. It is frequently heartbreaking, blackly funny, and utterly compelling.
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Reviews
Gripping, hilarious and tender, this is, without doubt, one of the books of the year
The novel brilliantly captures parent-child relations in the raw and the emotions that even the most experienced social worker can't tame
An amusing and unsettling story
This is family life at its most believable: warm and messy, bored and raging. WHAT I DID is every parent's nightmare, but will make you burst out laughing too. I loved it.
I loved it! Staggeringly good. Terrifyingly good
Hugely impressive, gripping, funny and thought provoking
Excellent . . . Dark but uplifting
[A] fine, challenging novel