Parental tale veers towards sentimentality

At the outset of A Boy Made of Blocks, the debut novel by Guardian journalist Keith Stuart, his characters Alex and Jody, a married couple, have just agreed to a temporary separation.

Struggling with their son Sam, who has autism, they need to figure whether they still love each other.

The real relationship at stake in A Boy Made of Blocks, however, is that between father and son. Faced with the reality of ...