After that, during all the months while my son was gravely ill and enduring treatment, I avoided public spaces where life’s carousel kept turning so flagrantly and I fled the cheap sympathy offered by those who love a victim. I felt altered, as if I could never navigate my life by the same compass again. I felt wounded—whether mortally or not, I wasn’t sure then.
I was drawn to safer places: family and friends who didn’t judge, who didn’t sugarcoat, who were extraordinary enough to have the stamina for us as we put on a brave face for them and fell apart in front of them in turns. People’s compassion helped up to a point, but my emotional wounds were salved most gently and effectively by something unlikely.
By chance I came across a sculpture called the Pazzi Madonna. It was created by the Italian artist Donatello almost six hundred years ago. It’s a carved marble relief depicting Mary and Jesus. The religious aspect did not matter to me. What mattered was the power of its portrayal of a mother and her child.
Seen in profile, the mother’s forehead leans gently on her baby’s. Their eyes connect, his hand reaches upward to clutch the scarf at her neck, her arms enfold him, and his body curves to hers. She is his protector. The relief is carved from unyielding marble, but it couldn’t be more delicate or fluid in its expression. There is nothing else to it apart from a carved square frame, cutting her off at the waist, as if we glimpse them through a window. The baby’s toes rest on the sill.
The image spoke volumes to me across the centuries. In its simplicity, it absolved me for feeling such grinding sorrow and it told me that my ferocious feelings for my son as he suffered were acceptable and appropriate and somehow true. It did so because it told me a story about fundamental things, about a common humanity that lies at the core of each of us.
The events of Odd Child Out play out in my home city of Bristol. My main characters live there, and it’s where their worlds collide. They share a home city, but on the surface of it little else. Their disparate experiences and situations create tension as the story unfolds. As I wrote, I considered what else they might have in common. Their flaws were the first thing to spring to mind; these are the nuts and bolts of fiction, after all. Some of my characters also share a feeling of being outside the “norm” of society, just as I did that day in the supermarket. I remembered Donatello’s sculpture. I thought about how the fundamental emotional needs for my main characters in Odd Child Out are the same. These people may not always be compassionate or fair or even likable at times, but they love and are loved; they crave affection and deserve our understanding and empathy.
Every day as I sat down to write Odd Child Out, I thought about how crucial the quality of empathy is when writing fiction. Treating your characters with respect and humanity is essential to developing insight into their complexities, and this felt especially important as I wrote about the Mahad family, whose life experience is the furthest removed from my own or any characters I’ve written about before, and was therefore the most challenging to imagine. I hope I’ve done them and my other characters justice. You as reader will be the judge of that.
And if empathy is an important tool for writers, I firmly believe it should guide us in life also. In our messy modern-day society, it feels essential.
My son is well now. He is thriving. I shall always remember the mother and child in Donatello’s sculpture and how they helped me through the dark days.
Questions for Discussion
1. Odd Child Out paints a picture of the horrors refugees face in their native countries and the challenges they encounter when entering a new community. Has reading this book given you a new perspective on the struggles of refugees?
2. Even though Noah and Abdi came from entirely different worlds, they developed an extremely deep and trusting friendship. What do you think each boy needed from the other that made them so close?
3. Abdi was raised in the UK, yet his Somali heritage plays a strong role in how others perceive him and his actions. Discuss the roles of race, prejudice, and privilege during the investigation.
4. The Mahads and the Sadlers each try to protect their son in their own ways. Do you feel their actions were justified? When, if ever, do you think you should cease protecting someone you love?
5. Noah wanted to explore and experience the world before his sickness took him. If you were ill, what would your bucket list be?
6. Edward Sadler knows he isn’t a perfect person. Did your feelings about him change as the novel progressed?
7. Detective Inspector Jim Clemo is tackling his own personal demons when he is brought onto the Noah Sadler case. How do you think Clemo’s personal and professional lives affected each other?
8. Maryam, Nur, and Sofia each had secrets to keep about their pasts. Do you think they were right to bury their history as they did, or should they have been more open with Abdi? What would you have done in their situation?
9. The man with the cleft palate is a figure of mystery for most of the novel. Did you suspect who he was? Were you satisfied with his fate at the end of the novel?
10. There are several cases of the media presenting partial or skewed narratives throughout the novel, such as Edward Sadler’s exhibition and Emma Zhang’s article. Do you think the media can ever be completely nonpartisan? Do you think the media has any obligations to its subject when exposing a story?
11. Were you surprised by the truth of what really happened to Noah? Do you think anyone is still to blame for Noah’s untimely death?
12. What do you think is the significance of the title Odd Child Out?
Read On
More from Gilly Macmillan
THE PERFECT GIRL
“Literary suspense at its finest.”
—Mary Kubica, New York Times bestselling author of Pretty Baby
“A wonderfully addictive book with virtuoso plotting and characters—for anyone who loved Girl on the Train, it’s a must-read.”
—Rosamund Lupton
Zoe Maisey is a seventeen-year-old musical prodigy with a genius IQ. Three years ago, she was involved in a tragic incident that left three classmates dead. She served her time, and now her mother, Maria, is resolved to keep that devastating fact tucked far away from their new beginning, hiding the past even from her new husband and demanding Zoe do the same.
Tonight Zoe is giving a recital that Maria has been planning for months. It needs to be the performance of her life. But instead, by the end of the evening, Maria is dead.
In the aftermath, everyone—police, family, Zoe’s former solicitor, and Zoe herself—tries to piece together what happened. But as Zoe knows all too well, the truth is rarely straightforward, and the closer we are to someone, the less we may see.
WHAT SHE KNEW
In her New York Times bestselling debut, Gilly Macmillan explores a mother’s search for her missing son, weaving a taut psychological thriller as gripping and skillful as The Girl on the Train and The Guilty One.