Let's Play at the Adams
by Mendal W. Johnson
Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1974
Some neighborhood kids tie up their babysitter. Spoilers ahead, but that's pretty much the whole story. The Adams go on vacation to Europe, leaving their two children with the nanny. The nanny wakes up tied to her bed, part of a "game" by her charges and three of their friends, an extension of games they play in the woods.
The book plays heavy into themes of inverted power between children and adults and relies heavily on the disbelief that children could be so cruel, somewhat deflated by the fact that they're mostly teenagers. Their ages are 10, 13, 14, 16, and 17, and the nanny is only 20 herself. I have no need for suspension of disbelief that a 16 year can be violent. If anything, it's more plausible than that they still play make believe in the woods.
I was expecting the usual hostage drama - the nanny would plan an escape, there would be near rescues and false hope. There was very little of this, or suspense in general. The only suspense in the book involves a drifter wandering around the property at night.
Action wise, it's mostly changing the nanny's bindings to take her to the bathroom, which, boring at it is, is a welcome respite from the non-stop musings and expositions. An absolute slog, but at least there's no payoff.
The novel's reputation for being disturbing is completely unearned. On a psychological level the novel is completely flat. A lot depends on the juxtaposition of innocent children committing atrocities, and again, teenagers. As for the level of torture and depravity, this is strictly weak sauce.
The sixteen year old rapes the nanny twice, once off page, once in a style more suited to 70s YA than a horror novel - if anything it's more disturbing that the author treated it so casually. At one point her hands are pulled up high behind her, and that's as violent as things get until she's murdered, which is done in the course of a paragraph, by a red hot poker of all things.
There's absolutely no motivation anywhere in the entire novel. They tie her up as part of a "game" and they get the idea for the abuse later. The lack of motivation seems intentional, running as a major theme, to the point that I wouldn't be surprised if Johnson was going for a meta thing - I guess we have to throw in a torture murder because that's what the game of horror writing is about.
Less value as psychological suspense or exploitive horror than other child-related horrors of the era such as The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane or even Devil Times Five. Reading other reviews I wonder if either I read the wrong book by mistake or if everyone else never read anything stronger than Beverly Cleary.
An interesting thing in the online reviews (and big spoiler here), many were outraged that the kids got away with it. Like if they had been brought to justice it would have justified the previous atrocities, and the fact that they weren't retroactively makes it less palatable.
I'm happy Valancourt reprinted the book so that you wouldn't have to pay three figures to be this disappointed. From Amazon.
