My teenager was reading this for English class, and I figured I’d reread it — I bought it just after its publication 20 years ago (pour one out for Nicholas Hoare Books). For a few nights this week, my kid and I sat together and read the book separately, and I think it’s the beginning of a new routine that I couldn’t be happier about.

The book? Still great. Clever, engaging, and quick. It provided lots of fuel for conversation between me and the kid, and I learned a lot about how kids with challenges are accommodated at their school, which was inspiring and a whole lot better than it was when I was in high school in the ‘90s.

Haddon’s kind of bait-and-switch storytelling here also provides good material for discussion with a young reader about complicated people and why people behave badly. We wound up talking about their ‘annoying’ classmates, why they act in ways that don’t seem to make sense, and how kids get that way.

The best books are the ones that affect your real life, and this one did that for me and my kid.