Reflexive Hostility: Susan Choi’s ‘Flashlight’
Blake Morrison, 9 October 2025
At the start of Flashlight, the main character, Louisa, is a stroppy ten-year-old. She’s sent to a child psychologist, Dr Brickner, on account of her misdeeds at school in California (‘defiance, disruptive behaviour, deception, peer-to-peer conflict, tardiness, truancy, larceny’), but quickly shuts him out: ‘I don’t like people asking me questions.’ He...