Let’s Go Play at the Adams’
By Mendal W. Johnson
1974 Bantam
Paperback, 282 pages
This novel is inspired by the
Sylvia Likens murder case, as was Jack Ketchum’s later work The Girl Next
Door (1989). Thanks to Grady Hendrix’s Paperbacks from Hell, this
book has had a resurgence in interest, driving already high prices even higher.
Vanguard has reprinted it under the PfH banner. Perhaps that is why I found an
original at a good price. I took the plunge.
While the Adams are vacationing
in Europe, they have their responsible baby-sitter Barbara minding their two children:
13-year-old Bobby and 10-year-old Cindy. All is rosy until Barbara wakes up to
find herself tethered to her bed. She comes to learn that it is a “game” being
played by the Freedom Five, the two Adams kids and their friends, 16-year-old
John, Dianne, almost 18, and her brother Paul, also in his young teens. They
consider her, at 20, to be an adult and, though they like her, she is one of them…
a grown-up. Now the kids were in power.
Naturally, things ascend, though
they happen at a slow pace. There were times that I was afraid I was going to
give up on it (a la Stephen King’s Gerald’s Game, a book I found so
desperately boring that I didn’t finish it and haven’t read a King book since),
but the prose made me stick with it, for better or worse. As the story
progresses, so do the children’s cruel ambitions, and Barbara is methodically stripped,
raped, and tortured. Much of this made me angry. I’m like, come on! You’re
bigger and smarter than they are… make it stop. But this was just all a part of
Johnson’s mastery of storytelling.
Every character’s point of view
is explored, from the 10-year-old right up through to the captive Barbara. In
parts, I couldn’t tell if I thought it was wildly misogynistic or if that might
just be how certain characters felt about the situation. At any rate, it made
me very uneasy for much of the book’s length, but I had to keep going. Such is
the strength of this narrative.
The book absolutely kicked my
ass.
It took a few days (weeks?) to
come up from the lows this book made me feel. It is said that Johnson’s wife
blames this book, the author’s only published work, for killing him, driving him into
deeper drink and depression. I can believe it. The attention to detail put into
the psyche of each character makes everyone’s motives and beliefs crystal
clear. And that makes it all even more horrifying.
My wife has read Ketcham’s book
and said I should avoid it, that it would make me mad. I have also heard that Adams’
is a “lighter” take on the same subject. I shall definitely be avoiding
Ketcham’s book. Let’s Go Play at the Adams’ absolutely kicked my ass.
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