Be Frank with Me

When I put books on my to-read list, I usually write a few sentence synopsis. For this I had:

“A precocious child protagonist, who may be autistic, his child-minder, his famous novelist mother and somewhere, a plot. It's quirky! And zany! And hopefully not ridiculously twee.”

Pretty much sums it up. It is a little twee – Frank is not really an accurate portrait of an autist, as much as a portrait of an idealized-self-insert sort of child: extra precocious, loved by adults and with preternatural insight – but in a cute way.

I often look for flawed characters that the reader nonetheless comes to really like, and Be Frank With Me really excels at that. All of the characters are substantially flawed but likeable and them coming together as something that resembles a family of choice feels really satisfying.