Let's Go Play at the Adams

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Barbara is intelligent, but between her decision to continue trying to appeal to the humanity of her captors (whom she thinks of as “just children”) and her reluctance to hurt children even when they’re torturing her, she ends up in worse and worse positions.

I'd like to express both my admiration for Johnson's writing and for the thought it must have taken to create such a thoroughly dark and cerebral book at a time when this sort of book might have garnered a great deal of trouble for him. In the course of this novel, five children transform themselves into monsters and one young woman is transformed into a victim -- and, ultimately, an object. For me, there’s such a chilling simplicity in that response, that something so horrible and violent can occur for no other reason more complicated than that simple fact. What is deeply disturbing and unsettling, however, is observing the children’s behavior and interactions with their captive. That they’re playing the game for real and not just pretending to hurt people only makes it more exciting, and it’s this weird lack of malice that makes it all the more awful that they’re doing these things.

Eventually, as all these stories do, it becomes a battle for survival, because if they let Barbara go, she’ll probably tell and they’ll get caught, but the longer they keep her prisoner, the more she becomes a living, breathing burden that they have to either let go or kill eventually.

At the heart, there's the same soul sickness, the same nihilistic sense that the world is an empty and cruel place. Maybe the most scary thing about both is that they exist as powerful and celebrated works because they hold a mirror up to the evils that lie so close to the surface of society which, but for a final 'No' would(and possibly do) become reality. But there is a reason it does not ever appear on anyone's list of most disturbing books ever read, or best horror novels ever read, while you hear about Ketchum's version of this story discussed all over the place. Over the last few years and with the boost from Grady Hendrix and his release ‘Paperbacks From Hell’ there has been a resurgence in the classic books of horror, originating from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. It’s a book that wants you to hope, because then it can torment you more as it shows you just how vain that hope was.The premise sounded fun and, as someone who has a high tolerance for bad subject matter, I wasn't worried about the content warnings.