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. Redemption Equals Death: In Game's End, a now-teenaged Bobby dies saving a girl who he thought was drowning. She wasn't really drowning, she thought he was cute and was just trying to get his attention. Say what you will about Bobby, but this does redeem him somewhat.

Fatal Flaw: Barbara manages to get the upperhand and fight off her captors and nearly forces them to free her...all while still bound and gagged, but relents at the last second because she can't bare to hurt Cindy any more than she already is This, he cannot explain. Not scientifically, not with hormones or physical reactions, not even with the scant knowledge of psychology he’s gleaned from Father’s textbooks. He knows the word that’s rattling around inside his brain, whispering in his ear, but he doesn’t want to hear it. He doesn’t want to understand. An interesting note I’ll add here instead of further on, in the Further Reading section – from the link I’ll provide, it appears as though Mr Johnson detested children (though he himself had two daughters from his first marriage) which adds further intrigue to the basis of this story using children as the main characters. The Baniszewskis lied to the police about what had happened, forcing Sylvia’s sister Jenny to lie as well. But Jenny whispered quietly to the officers, “You get me out of here, and I’ll tell you everything.” Smart girl. The Stranger is the second novel from Steve Stred and 9th release overall. The Stranger is another offering following in the footsteps of similar books Invisible, YURI and The Girl Who Hid in the Trees. As Steve describes his works; “dark, bleak horror.”

The killing of Barbara is the first real description of extreme traumatic abuse towards Barbara. Up until then she’d been tied up, punched, groped, raped and Paul had dragged a knife across her. While the rape is a physical assault, the use of it in this story is more for the psychological damage it inflicts on Barbara and the beginning of the transformation of John. Dianne does, at one point, grab and twist one of Barbara’s breasts, but up until then, Johnson has downplayed those scenes to a degree. When it is time for Barbara to die, things ramp up. Barbara struggles but ultimately fails in her attempt to escape.

Johnson's writing expresses the thoughts and feelings of these characters without judgment and with little interruption, giving the story an interestingly isolated feeling, not unlike that found in 50s and 60s family television. This tone, and the darker course of events (mingled as they are), make for a disturbing story that rather than bashing you over the head with the horror (as is the case with Ketchum's similarly dark book The Girl Next Door) gives you a strange window into the scene, completely separate from the events (as with an episode of say The Twilight Zone) for all that you take in. Dianne likes gray, and she likes other things she’s not supposed to even notice, too. Paul staring at her naked body with those wide, brown eyes of his; the choked-off, painful noises her mother makes sometimes, in the middle of the night. Most of all, she likes the times she has to herself, when she can turn all her concentration inward and think of all the things she knows from books. 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. And would you believe that it was boring? Oh yes! Never had I before read something with this intense of content and had so much trouble staying awake, like Droopy Dog with sleep apnea. Heel–Face Turn: Bobby is turned inside-out by guilt and ultimately redeems himself for what many would consider an irredeemable act. And just a final warning here – some of the subject matter may be difficult for some people to digest or read.Game's End retconned this two ways. First, Barbara was saved at the last moment. Second, most of the book was about the kids answering for their crimes (and the tragedy their parents go through) While watching the children for the first four days, prim and proper, beautiful and athletic Barbara became the object of eroticism for the children. They have fallen in love with her, a love that is filled with resentment against Barbara’s assuming of the adult role. They fantasized about the games they would play with her. Games that involved imprisoning and possessing the object of their eroticism, an object that is also a symbol of adult control. After four days, they imprisoned her in a game of their own making. They did it because they wanted to know that it can be done. They wanted to know that it is possible to reverse the adult/child, warden/ward roles, in which the “adult” does the punishing/reward if the “child” behaves accordingly. When Barbara asked Bobby “Why?” did they do it. He answered because “it’d be fun,” in the way young children can answer, unreflecting, unsympathetic and egocentric. These are the things she prays to, in the end. She finds herself with a sudden understanding for what her mother’s always called paganism. Spirits do live in the trees, and in the sun, and in the plants of the forest.

My only annoyance with the book that Johnson had was Barbara’s internal discussions with her college roommate Terry. It worked well to demonstrate Barbara’s continued descent but I felt no connection to the Terry character, nor in the epilogue as well. I'm not a glass half-full kinda guy. I know that children can often (usually?) have little to no moral compass. more importantly, I know how the world can be a cruel and relentless place; I've seen the horrible things it can inflict on people. thank you, work history. but there is always context for why people do the things they do. not context that excuses those things, but context that allows an understanding of why they occurred. PDF / EPUB File Name: Lets_Go_Play_at_the_Adams_-_Mendal_W_Johnson.pdf, Lets_Go_Play_at_the_Adams_-_Mendal_W_Johnson.epubI have to say LET'S GO PLAY AT THE ADAMS' surprised me. It was more well written than I thought it would be, and the psychology seemed spot on. The facts remain however, this denouement was the same as in Ketchum's book, and as in real life. It was a tragedy and these kids were monsters. Next is Bobby, aged 10, the only kid of the bunch who shows any remorse at what they’ve done. I personally feel that Bobby was the subject of peer-pressure. He thought kidnapping an adult would be fun, and as a young child, couldn’t comprehend the consequences of his actions. Other reviewers didn’t feel sorry for Bobby, but in a way, I did. We also get a look into both the interior lives of Barbara and her captors. The children, apart from their horrifying actions, are made to look as much as they can like people. Immature, terrifying people who do whatever they feel like because they can and think up convoluted justifications for why they should hurt a human being as part of their game, but people nonetheless. Hearing Barbara’s thoughts as she’s continually put in helpless situations makes you wish she could break out, and forces you to care about her as she slowly loses her mind. Giving the Freedom Five their own interior lives and thoughts, normalizing them but not humanizing them, ups the horror because we can’t point to these children as some kind of monstrous aberration. When asked why they can’t just stop, they still give childish justifications like “we’re playing a game and you lost,” or “we just can’t, that’s all, we all voted.” There’s nothing elaborate or ungrounded about any of it, and it’s one of the many details that reminds the reader these are, more or less, ordinary children. Until something new comes along with the book, horror fans will still clamour for the book and seek it out. Whether they will like the story inside will be up to each individual reader, but from my end of things – the story stood up to my expectations. Purple Prose: The prose oscillates between flowing, florid descriptions, clinically dispassionate ones, bone-dry commentary, and abrupt, concise summaries. It's a pretty brutally effective combination.