Homeschooled

A memoir ‘A love story and a domestic horror story’ Michael Cunningham Stefan Merrill Block was nine when his mother pulled him from school in Plano, Texas, certain that his teachers were ‘stifling his creativity’. Years before homeschooling became a nationwide movement in the US, Stefan vanished from the system and into his mother’s increasingly eccentric theories and projects – including her quest to bleach her 12-year-old son’s hair to recapture his earliest years, and to make him crawl not walk. Beyond his formal lessons in maths, he was largely left to his own devices academically, leaving vast gaps in his knowledge. When, after five years away from the outside world, he re-entered the school system, he was in for a jarring awakening. At once a novelistic portrait of mother and son, and an illuminating window into an overlooked corner of the US education system, Homeschooled is a moving, funny and ultimately inspiring story of a son’s battle for a life of his own choosing, and the price of a mother’s insatiable love. ‘A love story and a domestic horror story, so insightfully written that you can’t always separate its loving aspects from its horrifying ones. I didn’t fully realise I’d read it in a single sitting until it was time to turn the lights on’ Michael Cunningham, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours ‘Block is unflinching in both his honesty about his unhappiness and his profound love for the mother who didn’t want to let him grow up. An important book for our current world, Blocks brave story will help a lot of people feel less alone. An instant classic’ Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of This Time Tomorrow ‘An urgent, wrenching, fantastically told tale that is also filled with hope, much the same way a heart can both break and hold fast under the weight of a mother’s touch’ Isaac Fitzgerald, New York Times bestselling author of Dirtbag, Massachusetts ‘Painful, funny, honest, heartbreaking. Nothing less than a sensational book’ Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Less ‘A coming-of-age memoir for the ages, in turns hilarious and compassionate, furious and faithful’ Mary Karr, New York Times bestselling author of The Liars’ Club