THE UNINVITED

The children have turned murderous and the adults become suicidal saboteurs in Jensen’s (The Rapture, 2009, etc.) compelling apocalyptic literary thriller.

U.K.-based Hesketh Lock may be both a babe magnet and an outstanding behavioral pattern expert, but he’s a man slightly at odds with the world or even a "robot made of meat," according to his ex-girlfriend, Kaitlin. Hesketh has Asperger’s syndrome, which makes him both brilliantly focused and obsessive (he collects paint charts and does mental origami), as well as lousy at relationships. When a pandemic of economic and social destruction breaks out—young children killing family members; adults wreaking economic sabotage and then killing themselves—Hesketh is invited to join the team trying to understand and stop the mayhem. But events become personal when Kaitlin’s son Freddy, whom Hesketh came to love and now misses badly, causes his mother’s death. Freddy has become one of the wild children, and Hesketh must step in to parent him, while also observing firsthand this frightening new tribe of feral, self-sufficient primitives. As social order breaks down, Hesketh tries to piece together what is happening and where it will lead—a future in which the children respond to the damage caused by their parents.

An intricate, intelligent, nightmarish eco-prophecy delivered in pacey fictional form.