Harnessing the innocent voice of a child to explore the cynicism and complexity of an adult world is a relatively common literary technique which has been employed to great effect in some of the best novels of recent years, such as Yann Martel’s Life of Pi or Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time. The creation of a genuinely naïve narrator, however, is an extremely difficult task, one journalist Clare Sambrook ambitiously attempts in her debut novel, Hide and Seek. 

The novel is written from the perspective of nine-year-old Harry Pickles. He lives a happy, ordered, middle-class life in Notting Hill with his doctor father, journalist mother, and five-year-old brother Dan. He is the fastest runner in the school and considers himself – along with his good friends Peter and