The Weather Clock said knife o'clock so I chained Dad up in the shed. In Scarper Lee's world, parents don't make children - children make parents. Scarper's father is his pride and joy, a wind-powered brass construction with a billowing sail. His mother is a Bakelite hairdryer. In this world it rains knives, and household appliances have souls. There are also no birthdays - only deathdays. Scarper knows he has just three weeks to live. As his deathday approaches, Scarper is forced from his routine and strikes out into the unknown - where friendships are tested and authority challenged. Unsettling and fiercely original, The Motherless Oven traces a journey through a bizarre, distorted teenage landscape: a world, after all, not so different from our own.