Trainspotting
Author: Irvine Welsh
Publication Date: 6/17/96
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Blurb (GR): Irvine Welsh's controversial first novel, set on the heroin-addicted fringe of working-class youth in Edinburgh, is yet another exploration of the dark side of Scottishness. The main character, Mark Renton, is at the center of a clique of nihilistic slacker junkies with no hopes and no possibilities, and only "mind-numbing and spirit-crushing" alternatives in the straight world they despise. This particular slice of humanity has nothing left but the blackest of humor and a sharpness of wit. American readers can use the glossary in the back to translate the slang and dialect--essential, since the dialogue makes the book. This is a bleak vision sung as musical comedy.

Review:

This is why I love reading challenges - they allow me to discover books I would have never picked up on my own. Let's face it, would I ever intentionally seek a book about Scottish low-lives - junkies, thugs, and prostitutes? Don't think so. But alas, the fate threw Welsh's "Trainspotting" my way and I ate it up like hot cakes.

"Trainspotting" is a collection of short stories narrating scenes in the lives of a Skag Boys (skag = heroin) - Rents, Sick Boy, Begsbie, Spud, and various people around them - their families, lovers, drug suppliers, partners in crime, or victims. Mark Renton (Rents) is more or less is the protagonist, this is mostly his story, even though the stories are written from multiple points of view in 1st and 3rd person. The majority of them is also narrated in Scottish dialect, so some initial effort to understand is required.

The best thing about this book is that it takes you on a roller-coaster ride - it takes you from revulsion to uncontrollable boasts of laughter to tears of compassion. Considering that every other word in this book is a profanity, I think Irvine Welsh has talent.

"Trainspotting" starts off as a rather repulsive read - within the first 10 pages Rents is fishing out the drugs that he has just rectally ingested out of the filthy overflowing public toilet. The repulsive factor doesn't really go away as the story progresses, we are faced with psychopath Begsbie who is extremely abusive to everyone around him, including his girlfriends, or Sick Boy who is very popular with women and at some point becomes a pimp of a few of them, or Rents himself, who drunkenly has sex with a 14-year old girl or shags his dead brother's pregnant fiance in the bathroom during his funeral. The list goes on and on. But the thing is, in spite of all these depravities, Skag Boys are strangely relatable and, dare I say it, often likable. They are losers and addicts and criminals, but their emotional and moral struggles are real.

The book is, although very dark, at the same time hilarious, it is filled with Rents' sarcastic humor. This quote from the scene can give you a good taste of the writing.

Here Rents is held by his parents under the house arrest. They are attempting to get him off the heroin, Rents' mom is trying to feed him.

"The auld girl sticks us in the comfy chair by the fire in front ay the telly, and puts a tray oan ma lap. Ah'm convulsing inside anyway, but the mince looks revolting.
- Ah've telt ye ah dinnae eat meat Ma, ah sais.
- Ye eywis liked yer mince and tatties (potatoes). That's whair ye've gone wrong son, no eating the right thing. Ye need meat.
Now there is apparently a casual link between heroin addiction and vegetarianism."

In the latter part "Trainspotting" is no longer a repulsively hilarious read, it gets darker and darker, as we follow the fates of Rents' many friends, and it's not pretty - too many of them are dying - from HIV from sharing needles, from cancer, gangrene, heart attacks. Seeing this many deaths, 25-year old Rents attempts to kick his habit over and over again, but will he and his friends succeed?

I think "Trainspotting" is a remarkable read and I will definitely read more of Welsh's work. But is this book for everybody? Absolutely not. It is filled with human depravities, profanity, and written in Scottish dialect. This will turn off many readers. But if you are looking for a challenging (in many ways) read, give "Trainspotting" a try. You won't be disappointed.

5/5 stars

The Stars My Destination
Author: Alfred Bester
Publication Date: 1956
Publisher: Vintage

Blurb(GR): In this pulse-quickening novel, Alfred Bester imagines a future in which people "jaunte" a thousand miles with a single thought, where the rich barricade themselves in labyrinths and protect themselves with radioactive hit men - and where an inarticulate outcast is the most valuable and dangerous man alive. The Stars My Destination is a classic of technological prophecy and timeless narrative enchantment by an acknowledged master of science fiction.


Review:
I think that this book pretty much just blew my mind.  I mean, am I crazy, or is this one of the most profound things ever written?

"You pigs, you.  You goof like pigs, is all.  You got the most in you and you use the least.  You hear me, you?  Got a million in you and spend pennies.  Got a genius in you and think crazies.  Got a heart in you and feel empties.  All a you.  Every you….”

Alright, you probably have to read the book to appreciate that, and you should!  Can I entice you further by saying that an android delivers the meaning of life in a radiation fueled moment of lucidity, before collapsing, about five pages before that speech?  How about the fact that this book contains an evil millionaire, an albino with abnormal perception, a gorgeous telepath, a radioactive courier, a slick super spy, a cold-hearted, red-headed jailbird, and a bionic psychopath bent on revenge?  Okay, I am pulling out my very last card.  Wait for it…

The Count of Monte Cristo…in space.  That’s right!  Except in this version, he finds enlightenment and awakens humanity in the end. 

I could see the comparison between these two masterpieces right away, but at first everything seemed to be happening much too fast.  How could he cram the years and years of slowly simmering vengeance of Edmund Dantes into a paltry two hundred pages?  But then I started thinking.  This is the future:  where teleportation makes
travel instantaneous; where the body and mind can be upgraded with hypno-learning and a little re-wiring; where information can be gained with the latest psychological coercion techniques.  In short, this is a world where patience is no longer required for revenge.  Like Dantes, Gully is a simple man awakened to all of his great potential by a fiery need for vengeance.  But Gully is ten times more impulsive and rash than Dantes ever was; he kills indiscriminately and without conscience.  And when he begins to awaken, he wakes up completely.

This book contains one of the most colorful, interesting casts of characters that I have ever come across.  I can definitely see that Alfred Bester had a history in comics; many of these characters seem like comic book heroes in the making.  I can also see that this was written in the 1950’s.  It’s nice that he could envision women fighting against their oppression, but I am a little sad that he saw the double standard placed on women continuing for
hundreds of years.  Also, I can almost see him delighting in his own progressiveness when he repeatedly describes Robin Wednesbury as a gorgeous “negro girl,” more times than he describes the race of anyone else in the book
(stick it in your eye, racist pigs!).  But it comes across as a bit glaring to someone raised in the Sesame Street, avoid mentioning race at all costs generation.  Some of the technological advances that he envisioned are quite a hoot as well.  For example, he imagined that teleportation would end the need for communications systems:

”In an age when communication systems were virtually extinct – when it was far easier to jaunte directly to a
man’s office for a discussion than to telephone or telegraph – “

I think that he severely underestimated the lengths that people will go to to avoid speaking face to face.

Perfect Musical Pairing

Tool – Lateralus

I’ve seen these guys twice in concert, and I love them for their sweeping, dynamic, ten minute long songs.  They put on quite a show – with crazy mind-bending imagery and clothes (or lack thereof).  Their shows always make me feel like I would probably be getting more out of them if I were on mind altering drugs of some sort, which isn’t really a
good thing for me (huge fan of reality and lifelong abstainer).  The ending of this book makes me feel almost the same way – it’s just a little bit too “out there” for me to fully appreciate, but I still found it incredibly moving.  This
song is all about transcending our basic, human selves.

4/5 Stars

Perdido Street Station (New Crobuzon #1)
Author: Chine Mieville
Publication Date: 2/27/01
Publisher: Del Rey

Blurb(GR): Beneath the towering bleached ribs of a dead, ancient beast lies New Crobuzon, a squalid city where humans, Re-mades, and arcane races live in perpetual fear of Parliament and its brutal militia. The air and rivers are thick with factory pollutants and the strange effluents of alchemy, and the ghettos contain a vast mix of workers, artists, spies, junkies, and whores. In New Crobuzon, the unsavory deal is stranger to none—not even to Isaac, a brilliant scientist with a penchant for Crisis Theory.

Isaac has spent a lifetime quietly carrying out his unique research. But when a half-bird, half-human creature known as the Garuda comes to him from afar, Isaac is faced with challenges he has never before fathomed. Though the Garuda's request is scientifically daunting, Isaac is sparked by his own curiosity and an uncanny reverence for this curious stranger.

While Isaac's experiments for the Garuda turn into an obsession, one of his lab specimens demands attention: a brilliantly colored caterpillar that feeds on nothing but a hallucinatory drug and grows larger—and more consuming—by the day. What finally emerges from the silken cocoon will permeate every fiber of New Crobuzon—and not even the Ambassador of Hell will challenge the malignant terror it invokes . . .

A magnificent fantasy rife with scientific splendor, magical intrigue, and wonderfully realized characters, told in a storytelling style in which Charles Dickens meets Neal Stephenson, Perdido Street Station offers an eerie, voluptuously crafted world that will plumb the depths of every reader's imagination.

Review:
When we’ve turned this world into a dried up husk and have to resort to shutting ourselves in to life sustaining pods and “living” within some sort of virtual environment, I vote we nominate this guy to imagine and design our virtual
realities.  Sure, we’ll probably end up with some weird shit, like fire breathing iguana flowers and pulsating organic clouds that rain mucus and blood (he won’t be able to help himself) but we’ll get the most detailed, complete, panoramic world, and I can guarantee that it won’t feel imaginary. 

I think that’s China Mieville’s greatest strength:  his limitless imagination and 100% commitment to his ideas.  Reading this book feels a bit like watching this video; like living in a place where nothing behaves as you are
accustomed to, but somehow it’s all still graspable.  This is my third Mieville, and I keep feeling like, when is he going to run out of ideas?!!  I mean, everything that I’ve read from him feels completely original and new…and
this book in particular just has one new and original idea stacked on top of another ad infinitum.  At times I did feel like I needed to slow down.  It’s like driving 100 miles per hour through an abomination of the Emerald City:  everything’s flashing by and I just want to slow down and focus on one of the disgusting, hideous details but I can’t, because…here’s another one!

So yeah, maybe I should actually write something about what this book is about.  Just as in the other two Mieville novels that I’ve read, the environment is a major character in this book.  New Crobuzon is a putrescent, festering, melting pot of a city, with combustible tension between its highly varied denizens and the city’s leaders (both formal and illicit).  It’s a place with a long memory, inhabited by recent arrivals, desperate and ignorant, building their lives up on top of waste, pollution, and the corpse of a desiccated behemoth.

In addition, this book has a large cast of compelling characters, which is something that I felt was missing from The City & The City.  Isaac is naïve in the way of scientists: he’s insular and so focused on his own ideas that he doesn’t pay enough attention to their potential impact on the world.  He’s a bit of an antihero: he’s impulsive and rash, sometimes lacking in bravery and integrity.  I found Lin and Yagharek to be the most fascinating characters.  I think there’s some interesting mirroring between them.  Lin was born down in the filth and muck, and managed to lift herself out and find a new life, but she can’t help but miss her old home.  Yag was born free and powerful, and through his own reprehensible actions, brought himself down to the gutter, and now he can’t get out.  Yag is also the only character to be gifted with first person narration for a few passages throughout the novel, which are my favorite
parts.

Isaac and Lin are in love, which is difficult because they come from two different worlds, and their relationship is viewed as taboo and perverted.  Isaac worries and guards the secret, but Lin is less concerned, as she is already an outcast among her own people.  When Yagharek arrives at Isaac’s laboratory, desperate to regain his former power, and Lin is commissioned to create a life size statue of a grotesque underworld boss, events are set in motion which could lead to the destruction of New Crobuzon.

The writing is elaborate and ornamented with a surfeit of big big words.  For the most part it feels appropriate, like he’s using just the right word at the right time.  It doesn’t feel overdone.  However, he definitely has a few favorites that appear frequently enough that I took note:  palimpsest, vestige, palimpsest, exudations, ineluctable, palimpsest, autopoiesis, ichor, and uhh…did I mention palimpsest? I wonder; if these words weren’t so conspicuous (because of their big big-ness) would I have even noticed?  I mean, if he had used “layered” or “inevitable” twenty times I doubt it would stand out in the same way.

I just have one more thing to add:  I’m onto you, Mr. Mieville!  That climactic slake moth battle scene?  I know exactly where that idea came from.  Do you get all of your material from cheesy 90’s movies or what?

Perfect Musical Pairing

Bon Iver – Holocene

Because I listened so obsessively to the new Bon Iver album for the entire time I was reading this book that they melded and layered themselves together.  Parts of each were visible, but they had combined and concealed each other as well…they had become a blend, a…oh god, what is that word?  I know it…if I could only just remember...it’s on the tip of my tongue….
4/5 Stars

Sharp Objects
Author: Gillian Flynn
Publication Date: 9/26/06
Publisher: Shaye Areheart Books

Blurb (GR): WICKED above her hipbone, GIRL across her heart
Words are like a road map to reporter Camille Preaker’s troubled past. Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, Camille’s first assignment from the second-rate daily paper where she works brings her reluctantly back to her hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls.

NASTY on her kneecap, BABYDOLL on her leg
Since she left town eight years ago, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows: a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed again in her family’s Victorian mansion, Camille is haunted by the childhood tragedy she has spent her whole life trying to cut from her memory.

HARMFUL on her wrist, WHORE on her ankle
As Camille works to uncover the truth about these violent crimes, she finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Clues keep leading to dead ends, forcing Camille to unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past to get at the story. Dogged by her own demons, Camille will have to confront what happened to her years before if she wants to survive this homecoming.

With its taut, crafted writing, Sharp Objects is addictive, haunting, and unforgettable.

Review:
If you ask me which words come into my mind first whenever I think of this book, my answer will be: nasty, dark, twisted, disturbing.

In this rather traumatizing psychological thriller Camille Preaker, a troubled newspaper reporter, is sent to her home town to get the inside scoop on the murders of two preteen girls - both were strangled and had their teeth removed. As we follow Camille on her quest to obtain as much information as possible about the crimes, we learn much more than we bargained for. The small town of Wind Gap, in the fashion of Twin Peaks, is filled to the brim with dark secrets, and not the least of them is the twisted dynamics in Camille's own family...

For me the most remarkable aspect of this book is that Gillian Flynn succeeds in creating a novel main characters of which are nasty women. I am so used to books where women are victims and all evil is committed by bad, bad men. Not so in Sharp Objects. Women of Wind Gap are both victims and perpetrators, they are promiscuous and abusive, self-destructive and violent. Men are only fixtures in their lives and pawns in their sick games. If anything, this is a refreshing twist on the old tired genre of murder mystery.

I liked the psychological aspect of this novel as well. Flynn skillfully portrays how differently people react to the abuse in their lives - some direct the pain onto themselves, some inflict it on others - and both are equally damaging to one's psyche.

I definitely wouldn't recommend Sharp Objects to squeamish. There is a lot of disturbing stuff in this book - promiscuous young girls, self-mutilation, sexual abuse, drugs. This is not a comfort read by any means. However I found it fascinating (in a I-can't-stop-watching-this-train-wreck way) and hard to put down. I will certainly read Flynn's other novel - Dark Places. Well, as soon as I psychologically recover from Sharp Objects.

4/5 stars

Rage
Author: Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman)
Publication Date: 9/6/77
Publisher: Signet

Blurb (GR): A disturbed high-school student with authority problems kills one of his teachers and takes the rest of his class hostage. Over the course of one long, tense and unbearable hot afternoon, Charlie Decker explains what led him to this drastic sequence of events, while at the same time deconstructing the personalities of his classmates, forcing each one to justify his or her existence 

Review:
Holy hell, I had no clue what I was getting into with this one. I am a SK lover and King’s earlier Richard Bachman books are some of my favorites. (readThe Long Walk and The Running Man if you haven’t) I happened upon this one rather randomly and couldn’t stop reading it. It is out of print, for reasons that will be absolutely clear by the time you are done reading the next paragraph. (SK and his publisher both agreed that it was for the better) 

Written in 1977, Rage starts of with a bang (pun intended), when Charlie Decker gets called to the office, mouths off, lights his locker on fire, then shoots two teachers. He holds his entire class hostage and the rest of the book is basically a psychotherapy session wherein he and his classmates tell stories of times when they “got it on.” (no sexual connotation) Are we all a little bit crazy? I have no clue. 

The shared experience of the hostage situation was weird…but not unrealistic. It is amazing to see how people react in stressful situations. I mean, there is a body lying in the room and everyone is basically shooting the shit, but I could buy it and that is what is kind of scary. It’s that moment when everything is so serious and you’ve gone beyond the seriousness to some sort of relaxation. King writes, “When you’re five and you hurt, you make a big noise unto the world. At ten you whimper. But by the time you make fifteen you begin to eat the poisoned apples that grow on your own inner tree of pain…You bleed on the inside.” God, how sad is it that ? 

When I saw the movie Se7en, I remember thinking it was crazy to imagine a government keeping tabs on what people are checking out at the library. This is the type of book that would be on those hypothetical lists. (hypothetical? :-)) There are at least two instances of teenagers taking guns to school and holding their classmates hostage after reading this book. Do I think it is dangerous? No, not any moreso than all the other crap we are bombarded with daily. Impressionable teenagers will find their inspiration from somewhere else. And this book is more of a commentary on how parents affect their children for better or worse. The takeaway should be not to exhibit violence in school but to keep lines of communication open, not be a shitty parent, and to treat your classmates like human beings. (is this even possible in high school?) 

Stephen King is the ultimate storyteller. I swear, on nearly every page, I’m either chuckling, underlining, or completely aghast. He is like that friend that we all have who can tell a story about something completely benign and have you rolling on the floor with laughter or make you cry just by recounting the plot of a sad movie. I’m sad that more people won’t get the chance to read this book. If you can stomach it, definitely find a copy.  

4/5 stars

Let the Right One In
Author: John Ajvide Lindqvist
Publication Date: 10/28/08
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

Blurb (GR): It is autumn 1981 when the inconceivable comes to Blackeberg, a suburb in Sweden. The body of a teenage boy is found, emptied of blood, the murder rumored to be part of a ritual killing. Twelve-year-old Oskar is personally hoping that revenge has come at long last---revenge for the bullying he endures at school, day after day.

But the murder is not the most important thing on his mind. A new girl has moved in next door---a girl who has never seen a Rubik’s Cube before, but who can solve it at once. There is something wrong with her, though, something odd. And she only comes out at night. . . .

Review:
I can't even find the words to describe how much I LOVED this novel. But let me start by warning Twilight lovers that this book is not about sexy sparkly vampires and teenage love. If you are not ready to read about ugly realities of human life, do not open this book.

It is not an easy book to read. The story is complex and involves many characters, whose presence sometimes is just momentary. The action moves from one character to another very quickly. But once you understand the pace and get used to foreign names, the story consumes you.

I will not relay the plot here, if you want to know what exactly the book is about, there are many reviews here that describe the story well. What I am going to say is that this is simply the best vampire novel I've ever read. Yes, I am putting it higher even than legendary Bram Stoker's "Dracula." This story is so much more complex and interesting in a way that not only does it show vampires from the point of view of their victims, but it also shows the world through the eyes of the vampires. We find out how very often innocent people become those feared monsters, we go through the transformation with them, we feel their guilt and shame, we learn about their relationships with their "Guardians" (who sometimes are worse monsters than vampires themselves).

But this book is not only about vampires, it explores the world of adolescent boys (the world I know nothing about). Surprisingly, I found out how important presence of a father in a boy's life. Without the guidance a love of a father, boys are lost to violence and abuse.

With all the horridness described in this book, it is strangely full of love and tenderness, understanding and forgiveness.

I highly recommend this book. You simply will not be able to walk away untouched by it.

5/5 stars

_The Hellbound Heart
Author: Clive Barker
Publication Date: 1986
Publisher: HarperCollins

Blurb (Amazon):  Frank Cotton's insatiable appetite for the dark pleasures of pain led him to the puzzle of Lemarchand's box, and from there, to a death only a sick-minded soul could invent. But his brother's love-crazed wife, Julia, has discovered a way to bring Frank back—though the price will be bloody and terrible . . . and there will certainly be hell to pay.

Review:
I'm assuming everyone in the world has seen the last Harry Potter movie? This isn’t a spoiler but there is this part in the movie where Voldemort is in some place that looks like a train station and he looks like a cross between some sort of fetus and a seahorse. When I saw it with my friends, we were all wondering what the frak we were looking at…in fact, it is pretty safe to say that I am still wondering a few months later. So I know Clive Barker wrote this novella decades before HP7p1 would come out but nevertheless, the movie impacted my reading enjoyment. Why? Because a man in The Hellbound Heart is trying to become more flesh and bone (just like good ol’ Voldy) and needs blood to do so. As he becomes more substantial there is a period of time where all I could picture was some weird-looking seahorse thing flapping around in a corner. This is supposed to scare me? Mission NOT accomplished. Also, Barker went out of his way to mention one of the victims’ saggy, gray underwear before he dies. I was more disgusted by the saggy briefs than the murder.

I feel a bit foolish that I didn’t know the movie Hellraiser was based on this novella until my book club buddy told me at our meeting. Because I read an e-version rather than the DTB, I didn’t have the benefit of all the creepy drawings. (Tip #1: Read the DTB. Actually there is only one tip.) I said to my friends, “Hey! That picture looks like that guy Pinhead from that horror movie!” Cue the cricket noises. Considering how short this work is (around 125 pages), Barker really packs a punch of a story. The brevity of the work really limits characterization and plot development. It felt like I was walking down a cafeteria line and just looking at all the things I could have but then never taking a bite of any of it. What kind of woman would just start killing people to feed blood to the demonish presence that may or may not be her brother-in-law with whom she had a rape-and-if-not-rape-certainly-rapey experience with before her wedding? Who the hell moves into a house where one room is totally dank and seemingly haunted? Who disposes of bodies and/or bags of bones by just tossing them in the spare room? Who finds a crazy-ass box in a haunted house and just starts playing around with it? (because that can only have GOOD results, right?) I just had to stop typing for a second to laugh at the memory of us rehashing the plot of this novella at book club.

Here’s the lowdown:
Was it scary? No.
Am I an idiot for not realizing Hellraiser was based on this book? Yes.
Do I recommend it to horror lovers? Meh, not really.
Was it worth the read? Yes, for the weirdness.
Do I want to watch the movie now? Yes, if only to see if there is a seahorse fetus scene. 

All Summer in a Day
Author: Ray Bradbury
Publication Date: 1954

Blurb (GR):  Margot is a nine year old girl whose family moved from Earth to Venus when she was four. She remembers the sun shining on Earth – something that it rarely does on Venus. All of the rain and cloud cover on her new planet are affecting her emotions, but her chance to see the sun once again is quickly approaching. The story takes place on the one day when the rain will stop and the sun will shine for a couple of hours. All of the children in Margot’s class are eagerly awaiting their first glimpse of the sun, but when the teacher leaves for a few minutes they decide to pull a very mean prank on Margot.

Review: Ray Bradbury broke my heart in four pages. Poor Margot, kids can be such assholes sometimes.

Available online many places; Here's one of them.

The Girl Next Door
Author: Jack Ketchum
Published: 1989
Publisher: Dorchester Books, Leisure Books

Blurb (GR): A teenage girl is held captive and brutally tortured by neighborhood children. Based on a true story, this shocking novel reveals the depravity of which we are all capable.

Review:
This is a fictional story based on an actual 1965 killing of a teenage girl in Indiana. The girl, Sylvia Likens and her sister Jenny were put into the care of a single mother by her carnie parents. The woman, Gertrude Baniszewski, several of her children, and some neighborhood children tortured and eventually murdered Sylvia. She was forced to endure unbelievable atrocities like scalding baths, the carving of words into her body with needles, repeated beatings, eating feces, and worse. Ketchum describes, in graphic detail, what those events might’ve been like, from the point of view of the next door neighbor boy. Teenage Davy lives on a dead-end street and has been hanging out with the same neighborhood kids for his entire childhood. One day, while catching crayfish, he meets Meg, who has just moved with her sister into Davy’s next door neighbor’s home. Meg and Susan’s parents were killed in an auto accident and the only relative to take them in is Ruth, a single mother of three boys. There’s not too much need to go into the plot from here because you all know where it is going. I knew where it was going as well, but that didn’t make it any easier to read.

A few weeks ago, I saw a story on the news about two 48-year old twins in Houston who lived with their mother’s decomposing body after she passed away. I watched in horror as the newscasters described how the grown men frankly told police officers that she had tripped and fell while they were watching the BCS championship and then they just left her there, conscious and able to speak, until she passed a few days later. And the reason that they gave for not calling anyone after her death? Inability to pay for burial expenses. (a judge has not ruled on their mental ability to stand trial as of 5/5/11) What made me think of this story in relation to the book was my wondering about how the hell anyone could ever passively watch someone tortured or slowly dying. Davy knows that Meg is being tortured and I was fascinated with his reasoning about why everything was happening and whether he should do anything about it. Ruth and other perpetrators of such atrocities just be mentally unstable...at least I hope that is the case. But there were/are just so many other people involved in crimes like this--are they all mentally unwell? I’d love to be able to say that a crime as atrocious as this could never happen nowadays but it just did. Angela McAnulty starved, abused, tortured, and eventually killed her own daughter in Eugene, Oregon just last year. There were other people living in the house at the time. HOW? How can these people not report what is going on?

In terms of the book, loosely basing a story on real life events really gives an author an out. I want to say that x,y, and z didn’t seem realistic or probably didn’t/couldn’t happen but I haven’t gone through the notes on the trials so maybe they actually did. I always get a horrible feeling in my stomach when characters tell the police about something and then the police either (1)don’t take them seriously; (2) brush it off; or (3) don’t trust a child and then turn them back over to their abuser. I can’t pretend to know how much work police men and women have but it is horrible to hear of events like this happening and to know that they were absolutely preventable if someone had intervened.

This is a hard book to stomach. I recommend it to no one and everyone at the same time. No one will “enjoy” reading it. A lot of people probably won’t make it through the whole book. It is filled with sick, sick things. But sick things that happened and are still happening, which makes it all the more painful to read. There is a special place in hell for people that torture children.

Let's Go Play at the Adams'
Author: Mendal Johnson
Publication Date: 12/1/84
Publisher: Golden Apple

Blurb (GR): Surely, it was only a game. In the orderly, pleasant world Barbara inhabited, nice children -- and they were nice children -- didn't hold an adult captive.

But what Barbara didn't count on was the heady effect their new-found freedom would have on the children. Their wealthy parents were away in Europe, and in this rural area of Maryland, the next house was easily a quarter of a mile away. The power of adults was in their hands, and they were tempted by it. They tasted it and toyed with it -- their only aim was to test its limits. Each child was consumed by his own individual lust and caught up with the others in sadistic manipulation and passion, until finally, step by step, their grim game strips away the layers of childishness to reveal the vicious psyche, conceived in evil and educated in society's sophisticated violence, that lies always within civilized men.

More than a terrifying horror story, Let's Go Play At The Adams' is a compelling psychological exercise of brooding insights and deadly implications

Review:
I like to be shocked. I like that feeling when I’m reading a book and I think to myself, “there’s no way the author is going to go there…oh, my gosh…he’s going there, OH MY GOSH, WE’RE THERE, so far past acceptability.” That’s why I’m trying to make way through a list of books that readers have told me are “the most disturbing book they’ve ever read.” Let’s Go Play At The Adams’ by Mendal Johnson made nearly every list I’ve looked at so it was an obvious choice for me. Comparisons are made between this work of fictional horror and Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door, which has a very similar plot structure but is based on a true crime.  Ketchum’s novel horrified me in so many ways—it was graphic and it felt over-the-top, but I just couldn’t stop reading it. Let’s Go Play felt stronger in terms of writing but I’m just going to say it: I was rather bored.  This is the part of the review where most of you are going to think I’m a lunatic, but I guess I was expecting there to be as much graphic torture in this one as there was in The Girl Next Door, and there absolutely is not.

Whereas Ketchum’s novel focuses on what it could be like for a bystander to see and ultimately participate in such horrific behavior, Let’s Go Play at the Adams’ puts more emphasis on how both the perpetrators and the victim would feel in a captivity and torture situation. The narration remains in third-person throughout but regularly shifts focus from the captors to the captive. In terms of plot, it is very basic.  A brother and sister (very Brady-Bunchily named Bobby and Cindy) are left in the care of a babysitter, Barbara, while their parents are on vacation abroad. Very early on in the vacation, Bobby, Cindy, and three neighborhood kids drug Barbara and then proceed to keep her captive in the house. After about 20 pages of this, that’s when I started to get bored. I was mentally prepared for the worst. I was ready for some horror movie gore and…nothing. Basically, this entire book reads like the kids all wondering how they could do something like this, patting themselves on the back for succeeding at their “game,” and Barbara wondering how these “good kids” could do this to her and how she could be so idiotic as to let it happen.

That’s not to say that there aren’t a few sections that many readers might find hard to read—there is  a sexual abuse scene that was rough and a section near the ending as well, but overall, I spent more time learning  about the mundane trials of having a captive than I did being horrified. Oh, they tied up her ankles instead of her thighs this time. Oh, now she’s on a chair instead of the bed. So now they are taking her to the bathroom and giving her a bath.  I understand the reasoning for this deliberate tactic of the author—what started out as a game was no longer fun.  Part of the allure of staying up late and eating whatever you want as a child is seeing if you can get away with it. When there is no one there to keep it hidden from, it becomes dull.  But imagine if you went to see a horror movie when someone got kidnapped and then most of the movie was spent feeding the captive chicken sandwiches and Coke, switching up the ropes, and the captor wondering if he would get away with it. Who would pay to watch that kind of horror movie? 

While I know crimes like this actually do occur, I felt like the nonchalance of the children was not very believable. Ahh, might as well just do this or that. They seemed to have no regard for or understanding of human life. I know that the value of a life is something foreign to many young children but these “children” were more early to mid-teens. One of them was nearly 17—and the babysitter was only 20.  I suppose I was just surprised because the children in The Girl Next Door were heavily influenced by an absolutely unfit mother or other family situations that might make them more likely to keep things hidden or to partake in abuse. Here, no one’s family life is really mentioned. All the children seem to come from regular families and live in large houses on the water. Maybe it is more disturbing when there seems to be no backstory. I mean, I’ve seen enough of those news reports where flabbergasted neighbors go on about how that nice man could never have done something so horrific. Yeah, right. 

So, in sum, if you’re thinking of taking a trip down horrific lane, I’d start with this one before reading The Girl Next Door. If you can’t make it through this, there is no way in hell you could make it through that.