Things being what they are, I don't think I'll manage an entry on the topic, but I can tell you here that what struck me most was Phile's desperate attempts to make sense of what's happening and to do the wisest, bravest, best thing possible--and the gulf between what he thinks that is and what it really is. I thought his unwitting breaking of confidences, his slips, were very affecting, as were his attempts to recover.

I was also struck by what a Jane Erye-ian world he lived in, which none of the other characters realize. They see his privilege, or if they feel sorry for him, it's for things that are completely inconsequential to him, like the fact that his mother has been gone so long. But he's a prisoner who must make daring escapes, whose animal friend is murdered, whose main ally (Baines) is unaccountably unreliable and nonpresent at key moments--and who may have betrayed him. He senses that Mrs. Baines is threatening him with death (which she practically is), but when he runs into the police officer and ends up at the police station, it's practically out of the frying pan and into the fire.

I found the very end painful in some respects. It was almost the height of adult-world erasure of children that Phile's desperate attempts to explain about the broken flowerpot are ignored. Of course what he has to say is irrelevant as far as the detectives are concerned, but I found it painful.