Let's Go Play at the Adams

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I decided to give Barbara her own section completely, purely because this character deserves to be set aside from her captors. It made me think about a lot of questions the book asked and the story and the characters will be with me for many moons. Barbara's confinement and torture are a slow burn, and we learn a lot about each of the characters as the children become bolder.

three children and two teens, ages 10 - 17, trap a 20-year old babysitter; over the course of a week, she is repeatedly tortured and raped.The torture methods are too elaborate, the killer is a machete-wielding clown… there’s something there that makes it difficult to believe in, something that tells you “this is fiction. In that brutal and matter-of-fact tone, there’s a further horror in just how the captor and captive think of each other. So, while I spend probably another decade considering whether I dare read this again, it will sit on my bookshelf where I know it can behave itself. So Barbara thinks about what’s about to happen, John’s second raping of her and she decides two things. Reviewers have talked about burning their copies after reading it, of throwing the book away, of removing it from their presence the moment they finished reading it.

After I had finished less than half of the book, I felt I had already gotten as much out of it as I ever was going to get.In some ways, Let's Go Play at the Adams' reminded me of Lars Von Trier's Dogville or of the movie adaptation of Apt Pupil. I wouldn't say this book quite lived up to the expectations of what is printed on the front and back covers!

I 1st read this book when on a family holiday, I was 14 and felt that I could instantly relate to many of the characters, although as the book progressed I did find myself becoming more and more abhorred by their behaviours - not because of what they did but because I could see in some of my social circle much of the conflicted desires and attempts at control. Author Appeal: Some people speculate that Johnson was a sadist and the book is nothing more than an exercise in self-indulgence. But no, Johnson's writing seems to skirt around this just enough so that the kids simply come across as evil. Both involve a group of children with a hive mentality, but while Ketchum's novel is about kids acting on base desires and sociopathic instincts that seem OK to them because they have the full approval of an adult, Johnson's novel is about a very different group of kids. I found that she become more emboldened with the incarceration of Barbara and enjoyed that she was involved with the entire process.If you like horrible books that are going to make you feel uncomfortable, and you can get your hands on this for cheap, I think it’s worth reading – even just to be able to say you’ve read it! Perhaps tame isn’t entirely true, as some things in this book will be shocking until the end of humanity as we know it. I have not read the book, so I can’t comment on whether its better/similar/worse than Let’s Go Play, but I have seen a number of people relate the two to having similar themes and scenes.

The Stranger is another offering following in the footsteps of similar books Invisible, YURI and The Girl Who Hid in the Trees.Good/Good condition, over all wear to book and dustjacket, upper corners bumped, bookplate on inside front cover, top edge of dustjacket crinkled, tears to front fold of dustjacket at top and bottom ends. In that case, 16-year-old Sylvia Likens was imprisoned, tortured, abused and eventually succumbed to her treatment over a period of three months. I must qualify my stance by saying that I am not and have never been a) a woman, b) a babysitter, or c) bound by a group of kids (actually not by anyone, not even in a kinky way).