Stefan Merrill Block was nine when his mother pulled him out of school—and what starts as “a fresh start” turns into something far stranger. In Homeschooled (2026), Block traces how his mother’s anxieties and conspiracy-laced “theories” reshape their home into a two-person world: part classroom, part stage, part cage. He teaches himself from answer keys, gets praised as a genius, and slowly realizes the praise is also a tether meant to keep him small.
As the years stretch on, the loneliness warps everything—friendships, body, ambition, even the idea of what’s normal. When he finally returns to public school, he’s met with ridicule and cruelty, but also the first real chance to build a life that isn’t organized around his mother’s fear.
Read the full summary for a memoir that’s tender, unsettling, darkly funny—and brutally honest about what it costs to grow up.
