In a small English village just outside London, life hums with ordinary rhythms — until a boy named Lanny begins to listen. Gifted, curious, and full of wonder, he becomes the center of a quiet magic that seems to awaken the land itself. Overhead, the ancient spirit Dead Papa Toothwort stirs, weaving through roots and whispers, obsessed with the boy who makes the village sing again.

When Lanny disappears, the fragile harmony of the village shatters. Grief, suspicion, and myth collide as neighbors confront what they’ve lost — and what the wild world has claimed.

Beautiful, strange, and deeply moving, Lanny is a novel about childhood, imagination, and the thin, trembling line between the human and the natural. Max Porter captures the eerie poetry of life in a world where the past never truly dies, and where wonder and fear walk hand in hand.