Two especially precocious tweens, a boy named J and a girl named K, figure out something is amiss. But like all mad scientists (or parents of any middle-school aged child), they seriously underestimate what looms ahead. So, even Richard and Marilyn - a.k.a., “D.A.D.” and “M.O.M.” - the married mad scientists behind this endeavor, anticipate that what they refer to as the “delicate years” will be problematic. In other words, they are on the cusp of puberty.

When the novel opens, the “Alphabet Boys” are 12 years old and the “Letter Girls” are 11. (It is worth noting that it seems not to have crossed the minds of Malerman’s husband and wife visionaries that some of their boys and girls will be gay, a variable that would certainly impact an experiment designed to remove love and romance as intellectual distractions.) They were, in the parlance of the adults running this experiment, spoiled rotten. The children, meanwhile, fear something called simply “the corner,” where two boys and one girl have been sent - and from which they never returned. There are also plenty of ex-cons to keep the adult faculty and support staff in line. The children have special teachers, special novels and special movies, all of which reinforce a one-gender world. The goal is to raise “the world’s greatest engineers, scientists, and mathematicians.” Humans are not the result of procreation but quite literally grow on trees. In the meantime, we have “Inspection,” a novel whose premise is also claustrophobic and unsettling, but more ambitious than that of “Bird Box.” A married couple, convinced that “genius is distracted by the opposite sex,” create an elaborate world in the woods of northern Michigan where 26 boys are raised from birth in one tower and 26 girls in another neither group is allowed to know another sex exists.

The novel became a frightening movie and then an even more terrifying cult phenomenon, as people began vying for Darwin Awards by doing stupid things while blindfolded - including, yes, driving.Ī sequel, “Malorie,” is set to publish in October.

The brilliant elevator pitch behind that book? When you see it, whatever it is, you will kill yourself on the spot: hence, the mother’s need for the blindfold. Josh Malerman is best known for his disturbing, deeply original novel “Bird Box,” about a mother determined to save her two young children, even though it will mean rowing 20 miles down a river, blindfolded.

Inspection josh malerman