A stained glass window with a section missing

Possibly the weirdest book I’ve read all year - not at all surprising from the author of Fight Club and Invisible Monsters. It’s the kind of book where each time you put it down - temporarily or permanently - you say, “What the hell did I just read?”

The story hinges on a practice where promising teenagers are headhunted by corporations and institutions such as the royal family, and auctioned off for billions in order to be trained to be the next leader. They leave their families behind and are to never contact them again. Their families become rich, and the adolescents become powerful and even richer.

It’s never clear whether this is real, or whether it’s the mixed fantasy of one or more desperately unhappy children who hate their parents. The kids all seem to come from broken and abusive homes, and as their stories emerge, some of the details - what they live with as normal - are heartbreaking.

Imagine that as a desperately unhappy child, you could build a narrative in which you escape your situation, cut contact with your parents, and become fantastically powerful, but you still manage to be miserable and bitter.

This is that.