The Mending

This is a story about a boy called Daniel and the fifteen years it takes him to put his life back together.It starts when he's thirteen. His parents' marriage falls apart, his dad moves out, and the clock in the kitchen stops - and nobody ever winds it again. At school he's the kid nobody notices. He's not bullied; he's just invisible, and that turns out to hurt in its own way.Then he finds people online who tell him none of it is his fault - that there's a war on and he was born on the losing side. It feels good. It feels like someone finally understands him. And it slowly eats about ten years of his life, costing him his best friend and the one woman who really loved him.What saves him isn't an argument. It's an old man down the street with a shed full of broken kettles and clocks, who teaches him that if you sit still and look at a broken thing long enough, you can usually work out how to fix it. And that people are the same.It's a warm book, and a sad one in places, and it ends well - though not tidily. It's about being lonely, being angry, and finding your way out. And it's about the idea that in a world where everything gets thrown away and replaced, choosing to fix something instead might be the bravest small thing you can do.