Let's Go Play at the Adams

Product Information

The spine was immaculate and other than a weird darkening (which was probably caused by water contact) and some pressure indents, the book was in great condition. In 2022, Centipede Press issued a hardback edition, with a limited 500 copies signed by Stefan Dziemianowicz and Dan Rempel, who wrote a new introduction. 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.

After looking at the lurid cover pictured in Grady Hendrix’s Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of '70s and '80s Horror Fiction, I knew I had to find a copy.

Both novels deal with children who hold captive a girl, sexually humiliate and rape her, and torture her to death. It was very hard to see Barbara's optimisim begin to degrade when she realizes that it has become more than a game and she's not going to get out of the situation alive. You’ve probably heard of this book and its cult status before, but if not, this review will have a few spoilers in it; spoilers I actually read in other reviews.

As Barbara falls deeper and deeper into her own madness at her situation she begins to think about only having days and then hours left to be alive. I feel that it could clearly have been a much more affecting book if it hadn't fallen as it was, published shortly before the horror boom and with it the blossoming careers of such authors as Stephen King, and only two years before the author's untimely death. My point is that the innocence of children is coupled with a rage that makes them horrific, like little adults trapped in small cute elfen bodies not yet fully capable of the full destructive power of their older brethren. com are from people who say that they've thrown the book away in disgust or even destroyed it after having read it, and one person admitted to burning it! Cover artwork by: Dan Rempel A beautiful book with printed endpapers and paste-downs, full-color frontispiece and illustrations and with marking ribbon etc.Out of print '70s cult novel is a fictionalized version of the horrifying Sylvia Likens torture/murder. I found it interesting how well Johnson had John justify it mentally that by raping Barbara he was helping himself become a better man to the future women in his life.

We need horrible, hard-to-watch films like Blackfish or Blood Diamond, and we need stories like this one to show us what it’s like to be a victim of someone else’s games. This book will make you emotional for so many different reasons throughout and I found I went back and forth between disgusted and crushed time and time again, sometimes within the same paragraph. However, I have no tolerance for narrative that endorses victim blaming and other misconceptions surrounding rape culture. The waiting for what's going to come next, the waiting to see how far the kids will take it, the waiting to see how long Barbara has to endure being tied up, waiting to see how they'll next take away some more of her dignity. At this point, I have no interest in reading the ‘sequels’ as most reviews seem to suggest that they read closer to fan fiction than true sequels.

What is deeply disturbing and unsettling, however, is observing the children’s behavior and interactions with their captive.

What starts as an innocent (not quite the right word) little game suddenly descends into barbaric acts of torture. The book itself has a grim backstory: based on the murder of Sylvia Likens (which also inspired An American Crime and The Girl Next Door), and intended as an unflinching look into the nature of human cruelty, the dark material and the questions it raised eventually led the author, a recovering alcoholic, to resume drinking, resulting in his early death from cirrhosis of the liver less than two years after the novel's publication and giving the book a singular reputation as the novel that killed its own author. The horrendous act within the book appears to have been used as a device for the author to discuss the difficulties of peer pressure and as I mentioned before, what happens when someone doesn’t stand up to the group. But the likelihood of finding three other kids, ranging in age from 10-16, who are mostly fine with torturing someone to death, breaks my suspension of disbelief. 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.

As a reader, you are pulled along on both sides of the story, observing the way that all the participants explain their behaviors and actions to themselves. In Let's Go Play at the Adams', Barbara is the unfortunate victim of a game devised by 4 highly intelligent and well to do kids who have been friends for years. Not If They Enjoyed It" Rationalization: The book most certainly doesn't justify it, but played with the second time Barbara is raped by Johnny; as the text states, "it is possible to be made to enjoy. I won’t dive too far into my thoughts on how bad things are currently, but this book felt like it was written for this year, for 2019, not 1974.