Reviewed by Patricia Simms-Reeve
The cosily indulgent title suggests an account of how family and others might deal with doing the best for an exceptionally intelligent child. This is not remotely like the plot of this surprising novel. A thriller, a psychological delving into the possible impact of motherhood and a scary supernatural experience all combine to make Clever Little Thing creepily compelling.
Related in the first person, it tells of Charlotte, mother to Stella, aged eight, who is highly advanced for her age but is remote, hates school and retreats from social engagement. Other mothers regard Stella as strange and attempts to encourage friendship with other children usually fail. Stella is reluctant to share company, and meals, even with her family. Plates are left outside her bedroom door. Currently she is obsessed by flight in all its forms and can impart complex scientific facts relating to it. She discovers a dead gull at the beach and wants to take it home to study it in detail.
Charlotte is anxious and obsessively focused on Stella and her life is exclusively devoted to being aware of every single detail of Stella’s every move. Her attention is hypersensitive to the degree that she imagines there are problems which her endlessly patient husband, Pete, manages to rationally counter.
Both parents work and a new pregnancy make them decide to obtain help. Blanka, a former Armenian refugee, takes up the post. An older, stolid, mostly introverted woman, she becomes a catalyst for the twisted plot that ensues.
At this stage it is clear that Clever Little Thing is heading towards a horror movie script.
Mysterious crosses appear on the kitchen wall. Blanka’s mother, Irina, bakes an oily grey flat bread that strangely quells Charlotte’s morning sickness and she craves it daily.
The weirdly blunt Irina, ‘child must have truth’, tells of the horrific tortured death of her husband and divulges intimate details concerning Blanka.
The book dives even darker territory with the suicide of Blanka followed by her spirit possessing Stella and altering her personality. Charlotte celebrates this new little girl who seems so ‘normal’. Before long, she adopts once again her anxious mother persona and agonises about the disappearance of the former version of her daughter.
Dramas erupt over Stella’s diary and Charlotte’s becoming increasingly unstable. Pete tricks his wife into seeking therapy which is unsuccessful. She escapes and by incredible means arrives back home.
By this time, the new baby has been born 10 weeks premature. She, Luna, is conveniently cared for in the hospital neo-natal unit while Charlotte pursues her latest crazed conviction – that Stella is in the possession of a spirit, that of the dead Blanka. She yearns for the return of the real Stella, despite the difficulties that involved.
With the pace increasing page by page, Pete, the near ideal husband has his image shattered, and the marriage ends.
The battle to gain custody of Stella comes to a halt at Heathrow and in the final pages, life is restored to the mundane, almost.
There is no denying this is an unforgettable thriller. Echlin combines diverse elements to create a ‘motherhood noir’ which at times begs conviction with the ranting of a mother who, it is evident, has deep psychological problems herself. She balances this with Pete’s calm managing of Charlotte’s rambling obsessions, then the solid grounding of Blanka and her mother.
Strange, scary, at times incredible, maternal possessiveness in the extreme, Clever Little Thing would surely ignite discussions at book clubs.
Clever Little Thing
[2025]
by Helena Echlin
Headline
ISBN 978 1 035 421 48 0
$38.75; 334pp