Helena Echlin’s Clever Little Thing is a devourable psychological thriller full of plot twist after plot twist, lie after lie. Echlin keeps the tension up through tight prose that reveal the main character, Charlotte’s, state of mind, a woman walking on the edge yet never veering into hysteria. A woman who’d do anything to protect her child.
Charlotte, happily married to Pete, has an eight-year-old daughter, Stella, who is bright, reading on an adult level, but “on the spectrum” and who doesn’t conform to social or cultural expectations. Charlotte is pregnant with their second child after multiple miscarriages and understandably anxious about both the unborn child and Stella. Stella’s babysitter, Blanka, resigns suddenly and dies a few days later. Shortly thereafter, Charlotte notices what, to her, are disturbing changes in Stella’s behavior. From bring a bright, creative, if socially awkward, child, Stella becomes quiet, docile, and withdrawn, a model child as far as Pete is concerned, but Charlotte misses her child’s vibrant personality and knows something is wrong. Charlotte becomes something of an amateur sleuth and tries to solve the dual mysteries of whether Blanka’s death is an accident and what is going on with the sudden changes in behavior of Stella. Charlotte becomes increasingly obsessed with these changes in Stella, though Pete feels they are all in Charlotte’s pregnancy-addled mind. As Charlotte comes to the only logical conclusion, she —and the reader—question what is real.
Threaded through Clever Little Thing are important themes: dealing with a child on the spectrum, autistic parents, autistic children; the stressors placed on parents to produce “perfect” children; stressors placed on children to be “perfect” and “exceptional”; depression and pre- and post-partum depression; plus international refugees and pogroms and the trauma induced.
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Clever Little Thing (Random House, January 14, 2025) is available through:
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