Let's Go Play at the Adam's

wow, i totally forgot about this book!! i also read it as a kid, in a summer run of "horror" novels, like several stephen king books, the exorcist, amityville horror... it was like i knew i was scaring myself shitless, yet i couldn't put it down!!

great thread!

OK.

So I just bought it for 1 pence at amazon.co.uk

I'll have a read when it arrives and then chime in with traumatised ramblings...

[QUOTE=Riddlegimp]OK.

So I just bought it for 1 pence at amazon.co.uk

I'll have a read when it arrives and then chime in with traumatised ramblings...[/QUOTE]

Right.

So, I read it - and what to say?

First of all, the book has one of THE WORST covers I have ever seen. Everyone moaning about Chuck's new Haunted cover take note - things could be a damn sight worse. It irks me all the more, because the words contained within are much better than the cover implies. If I'd seen this in a second hand bookshop I would have mentally filed under "shitty schlock horror. Avoid".

Luckily, I have the benefit of culty seals of approval, so I'm able to look past a cover that screams, in dripping red type:

EXPERIMENT IN HORROR

and, idiotically:

"They had in store for their victim a series of ordeals such as only the compassionless childish mind, schooled in today's sophisticated violence, could conceive."

Anyway, we never judge by the cover etc.

I didn't take to it at first. The style (very omniscient narrator) bugged me - I felt he was explaining way too much and showing too little. Then, just a few pages later, it all clicked into place.

This really is a compelling, dark and pretty complicated book. The way Johnson doesn't condemn any of the kids and emphasises their normality as well as the more twisted aspects of their nature - it's disturbing. I'm not even sure I would class this as a straight "horror" book as such; it seems much more psychologically astute and as much about the social complexities of kiddie “gangs” and how they relate to adults. There were no cheap “fright” moments. In fact, reading it wasn't so much of a scary experience as one that burrows deeper down, asks some uncomfortable questions and leaves you with indelible, nasty images.

It was never as imaginatively, sordidly, weirdly graphic as American Psycho, and all the more unnerving for it. The sort of crescendo of violence and nastiness was combined with the strange matter-of-factness of the children who, even when conscientious and seemingly compassionate (Bobby) still helped in the savagery. (There’s that one bit at the end when Barbara says to Bobby – Them or ME!!!! And he just says “them”. A simple and chilling example of peer group pressure and the adult/kid divide)

One thing though, and I'd be intrigued to know what you think (*SPOILERS*.....)

At the end when John rapes Barbara again and she has her first orgasm - did this strike you as suddenly jumping to more of an author fantasy than reality? It was probably the only time where I thought, "hang on - this is just a little bit simplistic and gratuitous."

Barbara is beaten, bruised, shattered and sapped of will as she faces death. It just didn't ring true that she would then have this moment of "love" with John. It seemed like the author was succumbing to the very "women as willing victim" type of analysis that he mentioned earlier in the book.

Either that, or it's a very brave scene that's has even more uncomfortable truth in it than this woolly liberal was prepared to accept...

However, more so than many books I've read recently, LGPATA had me thinking long, worried thoughts for a few hours afterwards. The ending itself is a very disturbing conclusion, for a number of reasons.

Thanks for the recommendation. It's a compelling, nasty and vivid read with some very piercing and troubling observations.

Riddlegimp, that was a freaking excellent review of the book. I've just started reading it and find that whole "hands" thing in the beginning really off-putting as well.

And although I'm no where near the scene for which you graciously gave the spoiler warning, I will offer this counter-reading of Barbara's physical response. Back when this book was written, rape was only beginning to be viewed as an act of violence as opposed to one of sexual passion. It was still something women did not report because victim, perpetrator, and the justice system all still saw the woman as having to been at fault for her own fate (shades of the Eve and the apple). One of the hardest aspects of being the victim of such an assualt is that your body does not know it is being aroused against your conscious choice. Bodies do what bodies are designed to do. The guilt factor of coming while being assualted is hugely complex and difficult to get over. In Barbara's case it may have been a sort of Stockholm Syndrome response or maybe even a last chance bribe: let me live and I'll be your lover. I won't really have a book-based opinion until I get there. But I had to stop reading because I'd only finished the hands on the piano page when a friend stopped over to watch "Capturing the Freidman" with me--and now I have to get over the idea that pianos themselves are instruments of evil.

You are also right about the gang mentality he's exploring. We had just gotten through the Mason family trials when this book hit the shelves. I think he was questioning how ordinary people, innocent children, can get sucked into the most henious acts.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts so eloquently. Not to mention making me twice as nervous about venturing into this nightmare one more time. Yes, the cover does suck.

[QUOTE=Luddy Dunn]Riddlegimp, that was a freaking excellent review of the book. I've just started reading it and find that whole "hands" thing in the beginning really off-putting as well.[/QUOTE]

Cheers - it was a fresh reaction just a couple of hours after finishing it. Sometimes I think that writing out your thoughts straight after a reading both orders them for yourself and shows what was most vivid in the book.

Then there are those ideas and responses that come with time and mulling it over...I'm pretty sure that this book will have a few of those bubbling away in my soul this very moment!

[QUOTE]And although I'm no where near the scene for which you graciously gave the spoiler warning, I will offer this counter-reading of Barbara's physical response. Back when this book was written, rape was only beginning to be viewed as an act of violence as opposed to one of sexual passion. It was still something women did not report because victim, perpetrator, and the justice system all still saw the woman as having to been at fault for her own fate (shades of the Eve and the apple). One of the hardest aspects of being the victim of such an assualt is that your body does not know it is being aroused against your conscious choice. Bodies do what bodies are designed to do. The guilt factor of coming while being assualted is hugely complex and difficult to get over. In Barbara's case it may have been a sort of Stockholm Syndrome response or maybe even a last chance bribe: let me live and I'll be your lover.[/QUOTE]

That's very interesting. As someone who has been brought up in a culture where you are taught from the outset that rape is about control, power and violence and not purely sexual, the scene in the novel did jar with me.

I don't suppose you would ever have seen a UK show from about ten years back called Cracker? They made a US version, which was shit - but this series was fantastic. Anyway, there was one particular episode where a female detective was in the pub with a few colleagues and she confessed to having had a rape fantasy. Later that week she was raped by one of the colleagues in a nasty, utterly un-sexy scene that basically coloured my ideas about the subject to this day. She was bereft, traumatised etc - everything you could think of the give the lie to the notion that women might secretly "want it".

But then, I think that in the context of the novel you are dead on with this:

[QUOTE]maybe even a last chance bribe: let me live and I'll be your lover.[/QUOTE]

It just somehow didn't seem enough. Anyway - do post here when you've read it and let me know what you think. I may re-read the scene myself. I'm very aware of not simply responding in ways that you're programmed to feel - if there's more going on there then I should be open minded enough to see it!

[QUOTE]
I won't really have a book-based opinion until I get there. But I had to stop reading because I'd only finished the hands on the piano page when a friend stopped over to watch "Capturing the Freidman" with me--and now I have to get over the idea that pianos themselves are instruments of evil.[/QUOTE]

That's a cracking film - loved it. Saw the director talking about if too and he's a pretty interesting guy.

But phew - all this rape, murder, torture and paedophilia - I'm off to listen to Stevie Wonder in the sunshine and blow some goodness back into my head!

Ah, Stevie--the aural equivilent ambrosia and honey. Perfect antidote to these toxic dark matters. You've inspired me Riddlegimp; I'm listening to [I]Songs in the Key of Life [/I] right now.

Cheers back at you. And I do hope the sun is shining where you are today.

[QUOTE=Riddlegimp]As someone who has been brought up in a culture where you are taught from the outset that rape is about control, power and violence and not purely sexual, the scene in the novel did jar with me.[/QUOTE]

You cannot believe how much relief and hope I take in knowing that we have at least moved that far forward. Back when I read this book the first time, as a teenager, I did not even have the language to understand what was happening to Barbara. I'm about 40 pages in now, and I cannot believe women, let alone young adult women, existed in such innocence at that point in time. That Johnson has her trapped between the traditional conservative prim girl and the proto-feminist is a very accurate rendering of who we were, back in the day.

I've also given some thought to how off-putting the cold omniscience of the opening. When I teach POV, I tell my students that the only reason to evoke God's POV is because God (God as understood or eventually understood by the characters) is a character in the story. Given the absence of divine intervention, let alone the trademark American Christian mercy in this novel, the indifferent POV of the opening starts to make a certain kind of sense. The fact that the story begins with such a cold removed observance of the victim's trip to church is a warning of what to expect from God here. God is only watching, e.g. the way he only watched the suffering of Job. It is warning that Barbara is already forsaken.

[QUOTE=Riddlegimp]I don't suppose you would ever have seen a UK show from about ten years back called Cracker? They made a US version, which was shit - but this series was fantastic. Anyway, there was one particular episode where a female detective was in the pub with a few colleagues and she confessed to having had a rape fantasy. Later that week she was raped by one of the colleagues in a nasty, utterly un-sexy scene that basically coloured my ideas about the subject to this day. She was bereft, traumatised etc - everything you could think of the give the lie to the notion that women might secretly "want it".[/QUOTE]

The show was broadcast on A&E here in the states, but I never got the schedule right to see it. Frankly, I'm happy not to have seen the episode you mention--but it is thrilling to think of a writer undertaking the difference between fantasies (the realities we control in our heads) and THE reality. Especially in the context of violence. Yesterday we saw a performance of the play [I]The Retreat from Moscow[/I], in which one of the characters says "I was surprised by how much the sensation of helplessness had me thinking about violence." I would offer that quote to anyone who thinks you can blame something like Columbine on a rock song.

Well enough of that then. I'm going back to Stevie and "I Believe" –because I need to.

so you guys are saying if I haven't read this ..."Adams" book, I should?

[B]ire[/B], I think[I] you[/I] should. As should anyone else who has the ability to hold historical perspective and narrative honesty in the same view. Much of it will read as anchronistic, yet the truth about how people will treat each other when there is no overseeing force and they have an available scapegoat is timeless.

A tough read for anyone: To [I]get[/I] it you have to have some knowledge of the era, the Manson family, the newly realized sense of atrocity America had learned from television coverage of Vietnam, the loss of faith in our sense of right and wrong after Watergate. For some this will seem ancient history, but this is the book that makes the Iraqui prisoner abuse make sense--if such a thing is possible. The danger of group think fully realized in a way that it had not been since Orwell in [I]1984[/I].

Yes, I think you should read it. And I would very much like to know what you make of it.

[QUOTE=Luddy Dunn][B]ire[/B], I think[I] you[/I] should. As should anyone else who has the ability to hold historical perspective and narrative honesty in the same view. Much of it will read as anchronistic, yet the truth about how people will treat each other when there is no overseeing force and they have an available scapegoat is timeless.

A tough read for anyone: To [I]get[/I] it you have to have some knowledge of the era, the Manson family, the newly realized sense of atrocity America had learned from television coverage of Vietnam, the loss of faith in our sense of right and wrong after Watergate. For some this will seem ancient history, but this is the book that makes the Iraqui prisoner abuse make sense--if such a thing is possible. The danger of group think fully realized in a way that it had not been since Orwell in [I]1984[/I].

Yes, I think you should read it. And I would very much like to know what you make of it.[/QUOTE]
well put. I think I like you, as a cultie. You put thought into your posts, and I admore that. you care about these things.

I'll see what I can do about tracking down a copy.

Let me know if you have trouble finding it, out of print as it is. I can get one for you if you can't find it--provided you can stand the truly 70's awfulness of the cover art/text--as [B]Riddlegimp[/B] has noted above.

If I put a lot of thought into my posts it is because you guys make me think. Better than Prozac that, asking your mind to yoga itself into new positions of thought.

[QUOTE=Luddy Dunn]Let me know if you have trouble finding it, out of print as it is. I can get one for you if you can't find it--provided you can stand the truly 70's awfulness of the cover art/text--as [B]Riddlegimp[/B] has noted above.

If I put a lot of thought into my posts it is because you guys make me think. Better than Prozac that, asking your mind to yoga itself into new positions of thought.[/QUOTE]
I see why your avatar suits you... but it's not something I could put into words.

see you 'round.

hey luddy dunn, are you a tom robbins fan, or just of still life... ?

I love Tom Robbins--in very small doses. I find him so clever and manically daredevil, it becomes relentless and hard to take in everything he's trying to show me after just a few pages. Like watching a troupe of Chinese acrobats--all of whom are clones of Robin Williams, who have been on a diet of nothing but Red Bull, Twinkies, and Meth for a week.

Still Life With Woodpecker is the only one of his books that I've read all the way through, but I've read it several times and give it as gifts to friends and use it to teach. How can a writer resist a novel that begins "If this typewriter can't do it, then fuck it, it can't be done." I adore the story and the tangents of romantic madness "How do you make love stay? Tell love you are going to the corner deli to buy a cheesecake and if it stays it can have half." mixed up with the proto-fight club anarchist exuberance including such matters as the recipe for making bombs out of Froot Loops and bat shit. (Tyler Durden and the Woodpecker are two guys with something to talk about) It is a meditation on the perils and joys of tequila, sex, and remembering the missing details in the fairy tale of the Frog Prince. It is also a very carefully considered lesson on what makes a story a story: not what you tell but the questions you leave unanswered because mystery is the gravity of narrative. "How do you make love stay? Tell me that and I will tell you the purpose of the moon."

I've tried all of Tom's others, and have enjoyed them until my mind grew weary of the linguistic antics. I set them aside and then forget about them. The more I have worked on my own writing, the more I found myself seeking transparency. If I do my job correctly, the reader should forget he or she is reading, should not see my words at all--only, as John Gardner would have said, the dream. That's the only rule; keep the reader in the dream. The minute the reader remembers he or she is reading, game's up. The writer has failed. To be told "I couldn't put it down" is the sweetest compliment a writer can receive. Tom, I have to put down, because reading him is watching Tom dream. Not the same thing, at all.

That said, I hold Still Life as one of the books that made me want to be not just a writer but a great writer. If you haven't read it, do so, [I]now[/I]. If that book can't do it for you, then fuck it, it can't be done.

you'll find in the cult there are two kinds of people when it comes to tom robbins... the cult is decidedly divided with the TR love: me on one side, everyone else on the other. have you read (or kinda read) fierce invalids home from hot climates? i've been calling it "commercial tom" as it's a far easier read than, say, even cowgirls get the blues; however, it's a great story, featuring one of my favorite literary characters "switters."

p.s. it's the linguistic antics that gets me hooked!!

[QUOTE=moe.ron]p.s. it's the linguistic antics that gets me hooked!![/QUOTE]

You and my husband can tag team me in the debate. He drop dead worships Robbins--well, as much as a computer geek can worship not tech-based fiction.

[QUOTE=Luddy Dunn]

I've also given some thought to how off-putting the cold omniscience of the opening. When I teach POV, I tell my students that the only reason to evoke God's POV is because God (God as understood or eventually understood by the characters) is a character in the story. Given the absence of divine intervention, let alone the trademark American Christian mercy in this novel, the indifferent POV of the opening starts to make a certain kind of sense. The fact that the story begins with such a cold removed observance of the victim's trip to church is a warning of what to expect from God here. God is only watching, e.g. the way he only watched the suffering of Job. It is warning that Barbara is already forsaken.
.[/QUOTE]

Yo Luddy,

That book is still playing on my mind!

What you say about Johnson's cold omniscience is pretty spot-on, but I’d even go so far as to say that our narrator was a character in the story, but a benign power that doesn’t influence or alter – it simply describes and relates with authority. After the initial set-up of the story, Johnson’s authoritative, detached approach is perfect for the appraisal of each kid and Barbara in a clinical, psychological analysis type of way.

Of course it was still lyrical and descriptive most of the time, but there were passages when really he was just giving us a psycho-profile - that would have seemed strange (and may well have been impossible) had he chosen first person or something less disengaged. I felt that at times he almost came across as a voice of judgement, not in “I cast thee into hell” kind of way, but in the way that he detailed the personality types and explained what their flaws or failings were.

Then, like you say, it makes sense in a more complex way as we are denied some of the compassion or even the deus ex machina that a more conventional novel might offer us. He even reminds us constantly (through the mouths of the chillingly practical and methodical kids) that stuff like escape and discovery only happens in the movies. Yet - somehow, for much of the book I was expecting Barbara to escape and maybe be recaptured - or something more common to the genre.

Even at the end, I found myself wondering if there might be a saviour - and I think the author cannily kept that as a background possibility to increase the tension. Clever bastard!

Actually - just as another point. I really liked some of his descriptions of the kids and how they related to the natural world. A few chapters started with them either heading to or from the Adams' at dusk or dawn and he drew some really vivid pictures (particularly one of Cindy's reaction to lightning as various gods chasing her across the sky). It reminded me a little of the film The Night of the Hunter, where the kids float down through this dark, nasty, violent landscape and it's surreal, beautiful and menacing (although of course the kids in that aren't the monsters!).

It also had a Huck Finn element, with the Pickers, rivers, boats and escape from the adult world. It made me vividly picture the setting and environment without actually pinpointing where it is geographically – always a fantastic achievement for a writer, I think.

Hmmm – that was a bit of a random babble – but I like this thread and I liked the book, so I decided to babble away!

[QUOTE=ireLocus]so you guys are saying if I haven't read this ..."Adams" book, I should?[/QUOTE]

Well, that wasn't what I was saying - but sure, why not.

[QUOTE=Riddlegimp]Hmmm – that was a bit of a random babble – but I like this thread and I liked the book, so I decided to babble away![/QUOTE]

Yo, back at you.

I'm enjoying this thread as well. It is very strange to revisit this book 30 years later. The first time I read it, I was the John's age. And now I have kids John's age. The eerie thing is I still can see it through the kids' perspectives. That's a function of the power of the writing and--you are really onto something--the choice of Point of View.

I recalled, incorrectly, that after the opening omniscience, that the POV shifted to a warmer, attached-third person, an empathetic voice. We do get more of a third person approach, but it is just as cold and clinical and the story is all the more brutal for that. Johnson's choice throws even more significance on the opening Church scene: the kids are good little Christians; God has seen them; He/She/It acknowledges its own remove. Imagine how differently the book would read without that Church scene? And the deity won't even grant Barbara full victim status, using the "Terry" character to do nothing but dismiss Barbara’s pain. (I'm only on about page 60--not much chance to read these days).

The author's tendency toward profiling the kids is another artifact of the era. I'm sure you are familiar with the term "generation gap" but it was a real force back then. It was us vs. them, the kids vs. the adults. No crossover in culture. I mean, my girls and I listen to the same music, watch the same shows, discuss all manner of subjects ranging from those of being young to being middle-aged. No such bridging existed when I was a teen. If you were young, you meant nothing and yet everything that was wrong with the world was the fault of the children of those who were supposedly in charge. A massive current of very quiet rage surged beneath the surface of everyone under the age of 21. (I often fear George Bush and the neo-cons are taking right back there again.) The narrative voice in the book offers a level of understanding that no human adult would have been able to give those kids at that time. That alone amps up the Job-like qualities of the story. God and Satan make a bet that human beings are by nature altruistic--then they set up the chessboard to see how it plays out, knowing full well the nature of the players they have chosen.

Oh and don't you love how the Adam's kids are named Bobby and Cindy--same name as the youngest kids on the Brady Bunch?

Since I know what is coming, I find the careful, deliberative pace of the narrative to be dreadfully unnerving. Still, the way it is handled proves once again how much the whole meaning of a story depends on POV. It is the psychic distance between the characters and the reader, and that distance determines not only the authority of the narrator, but the sense of agency for the reader. Johnson manages to render the reader as helpless as Barbara and compelled toward disaster as the kids. We expect God to intervene, let her escape, give her a chance--as you say, send a saviour--but little by little our hope, like Barbara's is eroded.

Hoping to get some more reading in this evening. Keep those insights coming, Riddlegimp. I can't believe this book ever went out of print.

I just finished reading. Two hundred pages in one sitting. I found it still as brutal and unforgiving as the first time I read it. In fact I was shocked at how many elements of the story had imprinted in my bank of personal archetypes, things I recognize using in my own books without realizing it. I know when I'm quoting Lewis Carroll, but I found myself drawing sharp breaths of sudden realization when I recognized tiny details I'd lifted from this book. But as fiction writers, that is where our vocabulary of metaphor comes from, I guess. What is the old saying? Talent borrows; genius steals.

What did astound me was how impatient I was with the prose. Perhaps because I already knew the ending and it seemed pointless to spend so much energy reading through portentous descriptions of weather and buildings and as Riddlegimp mentions, psychological assessments of the character. Especially at the end where the author is guilty of the absolute no-no of intrusion and he just starts pontificating in a fashion that seems as out of place and necessary to silence as the historian "narrating" Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The epilogue is amazingly crafted--except for the imagined Barbara part. The last sentence astounding.

In the end, it comes across that the author is the ultimate torturer, pulling the wings off the captured specimens of his characters just to see how much they will struggle to defend themselves. The prose is so careful and clean that now, as an adult reading as opposed to a kid of the book's kids’ ages, I have the sense of a writer holding a magnifying glass over an ant hill.

The book is ultimately a fraud--mesmerizing as it is--an equation set up to prove a point the writer wanted to make about society as a whole. Ss did many artistic expressions of the '70's. As much as I admire the boundary-busting nerve of the narrative, eventually these characters are no longer complex expressions of humanity, but cartoons of what we, in the '70's feared adults and kids to be capable of and deaf to. It is a book of its age. Without hesitation, I can easily say that 30 years on, we are truly a more compassionate--if still mightily screwed up--culture.

All those qualifications aside: it is a perfect allegory for how everything from the Inquisition to the Holocaust to the prisoner abuse in Iraq comes to be. Dianne's mediation on how something begun must end in harmony with its beginning is one of the most chilling passages of self-justification suspending accountability ever rendered.

If you can find a copy of this, do read it. Be prepared to be tried in places by over-indulgent description and needless dragging out of analysis (two sins of which I am guilty in my own stuff *blushes with chagrin of self-recognition*). The story is brutal. The pacing and approach antiquated. But it will make you think and ultimately drain you dry. And there is that final sentence...

Well, Luddy….

As per usual your insights and readings have made me think further about the book and offered an analysis that I wouldn’t have considered myself. Get your learned butt into the OC Book Club and join in the chat for Coupland, Joyce etc etc....

[QUOTE]I just finished reading. Two hundred pages in one sitting. [/QUOTE]

That’s interesting. That’s pretty much the kind of gluttonous reading session that I finished the book in. I’m usually a very slow, ponderous reader, and my girlfriend said she was amazed that I had finished this novel in a couple of days.

I think that, despite any flaws, this book is undeniably compelling. One long, brooding, drawn out, inevitable car crash.

[QUOTE]What did astound me was how impatient I was with the prose. Perhaps because I already knew the ending and it seemed pointless to spend so much energy reading through portentous descriptions of weather and buildings and as Riddlegimp mentions, psychological assessments of the character. Especially at the end where the author is guilty of the absolute no-no of intrusion and he just starts pontificating in a fashion that seems as out of place and necessary to silence as the historian "narrating" Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The epilogue is amazingly crafted--except for the imagined Barbara part. [/QUOTE]

Although I actually quite liked some of the descriptions of the setting and the weather (what's that term - pathetic fallacy? The weather seemed cruel, filled with malice and portent..) - like you said, it sort of agonisingly draws out this horrible climax - I agree about the strange POV issues. I think we've mentioned it before in our Adams' obsessed pms!

Part of me thinks that his chosen style works perfectly for the supposedly objective profiles and analysis. But, like you said, it is a little outdated - and when he pushes it too far towards the end it throws the reader slighty.

[QUOTE]The last sentence astounding.[/QUOTE]

I agree - the last sentence is one of those part-cryptic, mysterious and ominous final lines that have you sitting and considering the implications for some time.

[QUOTE]In the end, it comes across that the author is the ultimate torturer, pulling the wings off the captured specimens of his characters just to see how much they will struggle to defend themselves. The prose is so careful and clean that now, as an adult reading as opposed to a kid of the book's kids’ ages, I have the sense of a writer holding a magnifying glass over an ant hill.

The book is ultimately a fraud--mesmerizing as it is--an equation set up to prove a point the writer wanted to make about society as a whole. Ss did many artistic expressions of the '70's. As much as I admire the boundary-busting nerve of the narrative, eventually these characters are no longer complex expressions of humanity, but cartoons of what we, in the '70's feared adults and kids to be capable of and deaf to. It is a book of its age. Without hesitation, I can easily say that 30 years on, we are truly a more compassionate--if still mightily screwed up--culture.

All those qualifications aside: it is a perfect allegory for how everything from the Inquisition to the Holocaust to the prisoner abuse in Iraq comes to be. Dianne's mediation on how something begun must end in harmony with its beginning is one of the most chilling passages of self-justification suspending accountability ever rendered.[/QUOTE]

See, this is where you bring an important perspective on the book.

I never really considered it as a product of the seventies (which I suppose, at some level, shows that it hasn't dated [I]that[/I] much).

To me, there seems to be a whole host of horrible parallels in the world in which I grew up in. The James Bulger case (a nasty incident here in the UK where two young kids tortured and killed a toddler), a current case about three teenage friends who go on a seemingly innocuous camping trip, but then carry out a savage murder on their fourth "friend" with scythes - right up to (as you point out) the mentality behind the Iraq torture cases and overwhelmingly horrific events such as the Rwandan genocide.

So, in that sense - I think the book offers plenty of timeless observations, but perhaps not in such a modern way. Although a lot of the time I found his analysis of the kids' motives pretty incisive and disturbing, it could well have been the result of this kind of "seventies paranoia" that you mentioned.

The lack of a "sugar and spice" attitude to the kids is refreshing. Toddlers throwing petals at puppies while toilet rolls criss-cross the sky this wasn't, and I respect it for that automatically.

Incidentally, from the meager information that I found on the web about Johnson, one of his relatives claimed that he hated children - possibly quite a revealing detail!

I always thought that the most attractive and admirable character traits were given to Bobby - but also that Bobby displayed the most recognisably "adult" beahviour (methodical, considering consequences etc).

So perhaps a lot of the book is a manifestation of his dislike and distrust of kids after all...

Anyhoo - got to give ANY book that sparks such debate and consideration a lot of credit. I'm off to play at the pub...

[QUOTE=Riddlegimp]Incidentally, from the meager information that I found on the web about Johnson, one of his relatives claimed that he hated children - possibly quite a revealing detail![/QUOTE]

That is very revealing and goes far to explain the subtext I was picking up on and attributing to some broader social consciousness. I also think he did not like women all that much, either. Considering how every female character comes across--even the incidental ones--as weak or without feeling or avaricious. Barbara is considered beautiful, loving and stupid; in the end her smart "liberated" friend Terry ends up confessing that Barbara is who she most wanted to be.

I may have been over-critical of certain aspects of the writing because I recongnized a lot of my own patterns in Johnson's style and was analyzing them for strengths and weaknesses as opposed to just reading. Also, since I did now how the book ended in advance, I just wanted it to end and put poor Barbara out of her misery. Was it someone at this site who talking about how you can never watch a scary movie a second time and experience real fear, because having learned where the shocks come you go in pre-defended? Probably much the same thing at work here. Only stories that refuse to show or define the destructive force in physical manifestation carry a timeless ability to elicit fear. And this book does nothing but show you its monsters.

This has been a great discussion, Riddlegimp. I will definitely check out the Book Club, but again, realizing now how much of Adams' I unconsciously lifted, it is anxiety making to think of picking up more fiction right now.

Have fun at the pub. Cheers.

This is one of three great captivity theme books I've ever read. The first of course was John Fowles' The Collector, from which came the classic William Wyler's The Collector. The other was The Fan Club by Irving Wallace.

Let's Go Play at the Adams' is clearly the most distrubing of the three. A young woman babysitting a brother and sister goes to bed and wakes ups to a nightmare.

I think is interesting to note that many readers might have had the fantasy about making their babysitter captive.

Or might want to be taken captive.

True confessions time. I read theses books and imagined myself in the position of the heroine. Chloroformed and made a prisoner of some abductor or group of kidnappers.

Of course, I'd like to think I would have regained my freedom. I grew up in the era of happy endings, where Wonder Woman might be captured but manage to get her magic belt back and steal a plane to get back to Washington, D.C., and then have to turn around and save Steve Trevor.

Of course I can separate the difference between fantasy and reality.

The children in this book could not. The Freedom Five conspired to capture Barbara after years of playing games with each other. A new playmate to tie up and abuse. But as they are children they didn't think about the consequences of kidnapping someone. Soon they found themselves with a choice of sparing their prisoner's life, or committing a murder to avoid getting into trouble.

Barbara, like Miranda in The Collector, was an object of desire. But as an object her humanity and freedom have to be stolen from her. From the moment Bobby puts the chloroform cloth over her nose and mouth while she was sleeping she was transformed from person to toy. Then she was played with, and thrown away.

A chilling read.

Trivia note: Sally Roberts, Judith Wilson, and Susan Blair did an Arrow Films Bondage video in the 1980s called "It's Only a Game." It was based on the novel with grown up Cindi and Diane hiring Sally as an actress playing the part of Barbara in a movie version of the book. The first scene actually has Sally reading the book before going to sleep, and she is chloroformed in her sleep just like Barbara.