Lanny Lloyd

Lanny Lloyd is the novel’s title character, although the novel never gives Lanny’s perspective directly. Instead, Lanny’s significance in the novel consistently hinges upon other characters’ relationships towards him and opinions of him. Lanny is a young boy, and although his specific age is never stated, he appears to be around seven or eight years old. He lives in an unspecified village in the English countryside with his mother and father. He is energetic, enthusiastic, and creative, and he is generally well-liked by his peers and teachers at school. He is also sometimes eccentric, saying or doing strange things that, while technically harmless, are sometimes unnerving.

At about the midpoint of the novel, Lanny suddenly goes missing, and his unexplained disappearance soon becomes national news. The only evidence is a pile of papers in the woods on which Lanny has written strange poems about...