Sad, but very interesting

So we start out in the dark of a basement. There’s a little boy of 10, and he’s chasing the only crack of sunlight he can see. All he knows is the darkness. He has a sister who’s pregnant (we don’t know who the father of the baby is), a brother (he’s not quite right), a father (he seems a lot angrier than he needs to be), a mother (she’s fine), and a blind grandmother. Everyone acts super weird, and there’s no way out from the basement.

Eventually the boy finds some fireflies, and he imagines adventures with them. His sister has the baby, and the boy loves him instantly. The sister tells the boy that his father raped her, and that he’s the baby’s father. The boy is of course horrified, and they hatch a plot to escape. There’s a “Cricket Man” who comes to the basement regularly, and the boy is terrified of him.

There are flashbacks throughout, and we find out why the brother isn’t quite right (he fell down the lighthouse steps), what’s wrong with the sister (she’s kind of a pathological liar), why the father is so angry (he’s actually trying to get the boy to want to leave), how the grandmother lost her eyesight (fire), and why / how everyone’s face is burnt except for the boy and his sister.

It’s all a big family cluster f*ck. In the end, the only ones who are really ok are the boy and his new baby nephew. The family drama was very intense, and I can’t imagine living like they did for so long before people got hurt. If you’re willing to wait until nearly the end to figure out what the heck happened to everyone, it’s worth it.