Slow and tedious, I tried for weeks to get through this book. It was just not very interesting to me, and not much happens in the story.

This story, if true, might break your heart. Even as a novel, NO BOOK BUT THE WORLD will leave you sad and angry at the waste of a life.

Ava and her younger brother Fred have been raised by two parents who are free thinkers. They believe that most school systems are confining and putting a name to mental difficulty is labeling so also confining, not free. Therefore, they run their own school and do not get Fred, who clearly has mental difficulties, the help he needs.

Ava begins her story as an adult. Fred is in trouble with the law and hundreds of miles away. The book then consists, alternately, of her point of view and that of her best friend/sister-in-law, husband, and, finally, poor Fred.

The book goes back and forth from present, while Fred is in jail, to past. Descriptions of their childhood were overwritten sometimes. But the reader does need to know and understand how Ava and Fred were raised, how Fred dealt with his world, and how his parents, as free thinkers, just let him be.

The writing is beautiful. It made me think of Ian McEwan.