Book Review

Let's Go Play At the Adams'

by Mendal W. Johnson

     When the cats are away the mice will play. When Mr. and Mrs. Adams go on vacation for a week, their two children are left behind with a babysitter. What could possibly go wrong? Those darling little angels would never do something terrible like torture the babysitter, now would they? Forgive me for begging the question and spoiling the entire plot before analyzing the main theme of the book. However, I do have to say that Mendal W. Johnson’s Let’s Go Play At the Adams’ has a bit more meaning than one might expect from a horror novel.

The plot is as thin as it can possibly be. Bobbby and Cindy Adams, 13 and 10 years old respectively, stay at home with their babysitter Barbara in their house in idyllic rural Maryland. Barbara is an attractive college student, a member of the swimming team, and ambitious to become a teacher. The two kids call their friends over to play. John is sixteen, slightly overweight and may or may not make the varsity football team depending on how things go. Dianne is eighteen, awkward, shy, and book smart but naive in the ways of the world. She coddles her young brother Paul who is thirteen and mentally ill. Dianne understands him much better than their parents do. Together they have a club called the Freedom Five that engages in adventure games like playing at war or cowboys and Indians; sometimes the games involve bondage and simulated torture. So when Bobby and Cindy are left under the care of Barbara for a week, the next step is obvious. They tie her to a bed and torture her to death. Then they pin the crime on a creepy Spanish-speaking migrant worker who lurks in the woods near the house. That’s it. That’s the whole story. But the plot isn’t the purpose of the book.

Mendal Johnson writes in the third person omniscient, meaning the novel is written so that the reader has access to the subjectivity of every character. This is significant because the thoughts and perceptions of the characters are key elements in the building of suspense. Barbara, the victim in this game, is given equal weight in relation to the others in terms of character building. As she lies awake all night, bound to a bed and gagged, she tries to understand why this is happening to her. The internal monologue turns into a dialogue when she imagines her college-friend Terry by her side, explaining the situation to her. Terry is, of course, a projection of Barbara’s imagination. It is through Terry that we learn how Barbara is wracked by insecurities and blames herself for the torture. Terry later becomes instrumental in the narrative at the end of the book when the explanation for the torture is revealed. Along the way, Barbara bears a strong resemblance to Joseph K., the main character in Franz Kafka’s The Trial in that she feels she is being punished for something she cannot comprehend and the more she tries to find out why, the more elusive the answers get.

The other characters in the Freedom Five reveal themselves through their perceptions of Barbara. Although they make decisions by voting democratically, Dianne is the brains of the operation, the one who steers them along their course towards the eventual demise of Barbara. For her this is a power trip in which she practices her ability to dominate and control others. For John, the imprisonment of Barbara is an opportunity for him to overcome his insecurity, primarily sexual, in approaching women. Bobby is the one who has the most sympathy for Barbara, but his desires for her are purely based around principles of domination; he fantasizes about her as being a trained domestic animal, one that will always come back to him if he sets her free. He wants Barbara to be like a dog who runs after a stick that has been thrown and then obediently brings it back to their owner. Paul is little more than a mentally disturbed sadist and psychopath, while Cindy is merely the little ten year old girl who tags along with her big brother. Each of them has a specific purpose for doing what they do.

I believe that an important clue to interpreting this book lies in the name “Freedom Five” that the kids choose to give their club. It is exactly the kind of unimaginative and unoriginal title that children would choose for a secret organization given their age-related limited knowledge of the world. It serves as a reminder of how young they are, but more importantly it indicates the author’s intention of examining the nature of freedom. The idea of freedom entails the concept of being free from something and in this case the kids are free from their parents. Not only are the parents excluded from the club, but they are absent from the house while away on vacation. Occupying the space between childhood amd adulthood, the only obstacle to the freedom of choice that adults have is the babysitter Barbara. Therefore, she has to be removed, incapacitated, dominated, and controlled. They also see the world of adults as being an unhappy place. Adults have freedom and with that comes responsibility. Even worse, their lives look dull doing little more than going to work and arguing with each other. The Freedom Five see this as a last chance to experience complete freedom without the accompanying negativity of maturity.

With Barbara tied up and gagged so she can not give them orders, they are free to do whatever they want like staying up all night watching TV or eating all the ice cream, maybe even drinking milkshakes for breakfast. But this freedom isn’t as exciting as they expect it to be. In fact it is downright boring and they do have responsibilities like taking care of themselves and making sure Barabara doesn’t die. Therefore, they have to up the ante by making plans to torture Barbara to death. Most of the narrative tension revolves around the kids suggesting plans and deciding what to do while the reader is suspended in uncertainty, wondering if these things will really happen or if they will be successful or not. Most of the book hovers between light BDSM pulp crime fiction and existential allegory without tipping too far in either direction.

It is at the end and in the epilogue that the meaning of the story is brought out in full. It is surprising to learn that the Freedom Five actually admire Barbara. Her friend Terry is envious of her too as she explains during the final soliloquy. In their minds, Barbara is charming, attractive, intelligent, and talented. Even worse, she embodies all these qualities without making any effort. This is a poignant irony considering the earlier chapter when Barbara thinks about how insecure and awkward she feels. But in the end, perceptions are stronger motivators than reality. Besides, the Freedom Five are children who aren’t psychologically developed enough to understand the complex points of view of others. But in any case, Barbara represents their Ideal Person while they all feel inferior in her presence. So instead of making an effort to build their own characters and achieve a higher state of being, they decide to degrade and destroy their idol. They don’t raise their sense of self-worth by making self-improvements; they do so by tearing down another human being who they perceive to be better than them. All too often, this is the way the world works.

Mendal Johnson could be criticized for making this novel too subtle. On one hand, he shows restraint (haha, no pun intended) when describing the torture to avoid making this into some kind of sick fantasy. On the other hand, he understates the philosophical theme to avoid boring the audience by turning this into a lecture on how terrible it is to hurt people. After getting to the end, I thought the two sides, the form and the meaning, were actually perfectly balanced as soon as he drove the main idea home in Terry’s monologue. I just think that the novel suffers a little bit from too much understatement. He could have turned up the volume on both the torture scenes and the theoretical theme without failing to realize the novel’s intentions provided he emphasizes both aspects in equal measures.

In conclusion, Let’s Go Play At the Adams’ is not so much of a disturbing book as it as a depressing one. The bondage and torture are not so extreme that they make your stomach churn. In fact, the violence barely registers as more than some PG-13 rated horror schlock you would see at a drive-in theater. The commentary on the psychology of power, the nature of freedom, and the sick-mindedness of human society is a little more potent. I do think Mendal W. Johnson is successful in making a statement about human nature. I also think it says something about the time it was written in. Just after the Summer of Love and Woodstock, youth culture and ideologies of freedom were big parts of the zeitgiest. Like Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, I think Let’s Go Plat At the Adams’ was partially intended to warn us about the dangers of letting young people have more freedom than they need. I have mixed feelings about that idea but I do think it something worthy of consideration.

If you just want to read something for cheap thrills or shock value, you won’t get much out of this book. But if your mind is subtle enough then the next time you wish for someone’s downfall. gloat over someone failure, laugh at someone stupidity, or think insulting thoughts about another person, even if you keep them to yourself, then remember the Freedom Five and ask yourself in honesty if there is something inside you that is just like those terrible kids who tortured Barbara.

 

Book Review

Arabia:

A Journey Through the Labyrinth

by Jonathan Raban

     As Jonathan Raban’s Arabia: A Journey Through the Labyrinth starts off, the author, while living in London, begins noticing immigrants in his neighborhood. Increasingly he sees more and more Arabs, particularly from the Gulf states of the Arabian Peninsula on the streets, opening up stores and restaurants, and moving into homes nearby. Not only are they more visible because of the traditional clothing they wear, but their insularity also sets them apart, speaking Arabic and little English. They also have seemingly endless amounts of cash. The Londoners are not happy about their presence, but are often too reserved to openly express their contempt so the Arabian people go about their business never knowing how derisive the English people are towards them. Jonathan Raban wanted to know more about these people so at the end of the 1970s, he goes on a prolonged sojourn around the outer edges of Arabia to learn whatever he can.

The travelogue does not get off to a strong start. Raban begins on the tiny island nation of Bahrain, a place like the other Gulf states where foreigners outnumber the native inhabitants. He barely has any contact with Bahraini people and spends most of his time socializing with expats, mostly contract workers and businessmen, who are there for the sake of making money, not out of appreciation for the culture. This is the least exciting chapter until he gets to Egypt.

Things pick up when Raban visits Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. He speaks with more of the local Arabic population, but mostly limits the discourses to government officials, bureaucrats, and businessmen. Other people he speaks with are nationals from the poorer Middle Eastern countries and the Indian subcontinent, all who are there because they are ambitions and tired of living in impoverished countries where their professional skills are going to waste. He also meets a group of Qatari artists employed by the Ministry of Fine Arts to help recreate an imaginary traditional past through the medium of fake folk art. One playwright suffers from severe writer’s block because everything he puts down on paper gets rejected by the ministry cesnors, saying his works are potentially offensive to government officials. It is a good example of how authoritarianism kills creativity.

While skirting around the eastern edge of Arabia, the influence of the oil boom and the expanding economy is transforming the region. Skyscrapers are being built and foreigners are flooding these small emerging nations. The lifestyles, the technology, and the banking systems are changing. Saudis are everywhere with their oversize wads of cash and their indulgence in vices that are forbidden in their home country. Anomie and social dislocation are rampant as menial workers, local citizens, and Bedu tribes-people sink deeper into the pits of poverty while money gets funneled by the ton into the hands of the well-connected. Raban captures the atmosphere and scenery of desert kingdoms with rapidly expanding economies effectively. He arrives and writes at the right time to capture a transitional moment in the Middle East when traditions are fading away and hyper-modernity is rushing in.

And then we get a completely different picture of the Arabian Peninsula when he flies to Sana’a, Yemen, then travels on to Egypt and Jordan. The chapter on Yemen was the best in the book, partly because it is the only country I did not visit when traveling in the Gulf states, but also because he gets so up close and personal with the local people in ways he doesn’t in the previous three countries. While the oil industry is fast-tracking the center and eastern countries of Arabia into the modern age, Yemen is mired in poverty. Yemen is, however, experiencing an economic boom of its own since so many Yemenis go to the richer Gulf states as guest workers and send remittences back home to their families, something that is raising the standards of living for the poorest of all the Middle Eastern countries while not being sufficient to take the country to the next level. Sana’a is described as dirty, noisy, disorienting, and often surreal. The kyat-chewing locals are hospitable and rude in equal measures. Raban experiences some of the best times with impoverished but ambitious young men who go out of their way to explain their isolated country to him. Then he comes close to witnessing a public execution with a carnivalesque atmosphere, feeling confused as whole families eat snacks and take photos, cheering and singing as if they are at a circus while political revolutionaries are blown to pieces by machine gun fire in a public market. For interesting travel stories, this is one that can’t be beat, even if Raba does leave the scene befor the real action begins.

Raban’s visit to Egypt is a real letdown. He treats the city of Cairo as if it is little more than a big red light district full of clueless, airheaded western tourists. Spending almost no time with ordinary Egyptians, he prefers to frequent casinos, go-go bars, and brothels which are almost exclusively packed with men from Saudi Arabia. From what he sees, Raban concludes that Saudis aren’t much fun, even when they are spending all their money on poker, prostitutes, and liquor. It is an interesting insight, but considering how much Egypt has to offer for travelers, this passage falls far short of expectations. If I were Egyptian, I would not be happy with this representation of the country.

Jordan is a different matter as Raban is surprised to see how comfortably the people live despite their miniscule GDP. He hooks up with members at all socio-economic levels of society, encounters its semi-thriving but kitschy art scene, and is shocked when he visits a Palestinian refugee camp to see how comfortably the people are living there.

Jonathan Raban never visits Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia, or any other Arabic country in the Middle East, nor does he visit South Yemen which is dominated by a communist government at the time of writing.

While there are a lot of interesting passages in this book, and some great descriptions as well, alongside some often sarcastic and snarky humor, there are some parts of the book that just don’t work. He sometimes lapses into confused abstractions that make him sound like a drunk muttering to himself in a bar. The chapter on Bahrain was nearly pointless in terms of what Raban set out to accomplish. I will admit though that his impression of Manama was no different than my own in the dozen or so times I visited that country. I even visited the same British social club he writes about. It is still there on the outskirts of Manama to this day. The chapter on Egypt is embarrassing. It is hard to believe he thought it was fit to be included. The other chapters were well-done though and really capture a moment in history that is now past. I really do wish he had visited Saudi Arabia and Oman.

Arabia is an interesting, if erratic and uneven, portrait of the social atmosphere of the Gulf states while the oil boom is beginning to transform the whole region and the whole world along with it. Raban wrote this at the beginning of the Lebanese civil war, before Iraq invaded Iran and Kuwait, before the Burj al-Arab and the Burj Khalifa were built in Dubai, before 9/11, before the Arab Spring, and before glitzy high-end shopping malls began competing with the mosques as centers of Arabian culture. It portrays a world that is no longer with us, but is not too distant as to be incomprehensible. As for the conversations Jonathan Raban had with the people he met, I can tell you after having lived in Saudi Arabia myself that if he were to revisit his journey at this current time, he would find that nothing much has changed in terms of what people would say to him. My biggest complaint about this book is that Jonathan Raban provides a superficial understanding of the Arabian Peninsula; if he had spent more time there, getting to know people on a more intimate level, his perceptions would be different, in some ways more positive and in other ways not so much.  

 

Book Review

The Levant Trilogy

by Olivia Manning

     It’s the return of Guy and Harriet Pringle. Olivia Manning’s The Levant Trilogy picks up where her brilliant The Balkan Trilogy leaves off. The Pringles, a married young couple, arrive in Egypt after escaping from Nazi-occupied Greece in the middle of World War II. One obvious thing from the start is that they haven’t changed and their relationship continues to drift aimlessly like it has all along.

After their arrival in Cairo, Guy gets his dream job, working for the colonial British Legation as the director of an English department. Harriet also goes to work at the American embassy. They get put up in an apartment building supplied by the British embassy with rooms for U.K. expatriates. Harriet’s social life revolves around the residents there while Guy continues on living a separate existence with his group of friends who are considered to be bums by most people’s estimates. The two groups get connected through an unlikely coupling of Harriet’s erratic friend Angela and Guy’s alcoholic friend Castlebar.

Also a subplot gets introduced with Simon, a young English military officer who has just arrived in Egypt. Rommel’s forces are progressing across North Africa towards the Suez Canal and the Allies fight them off. Simon is ambitious, vowing to revenge the death of his brother until he gets injured and forced to spend time under medical care in Cairo. That is where he develops a friendship with Guy Pringle. Psychologically, Simon goes through a process of confronting the ephemeral nature of life during wartime and the often unpredictable loss of the people around him.

While The Levant Trilogy is not specifically about gender roles, there is an obvious and overriding preoccupation with the gulf between men and women throughout the narrative. With the exceptions of Simon and the kindly bachelor Dobson, the colonial bureaucrat working at the British embassy, the men in this book are portrayed as being selfish and self-absorbed. Guy’s group of heavy drinking friends are crude and irresponsible. Harriet’s friend Edwina also chases after men who use her and then abandon her. Even the Egyptian natives treat women as if women are not intelligent enough to understand the intellectual world of men.

Guy is at the center of all this. While Harriet makes every effort she can to spend time with him, he routinely ignores her, treats her like she is less important than his job and his peers, and even refuses to take day trips to the pyramids and other sites which he thinks of as tacky and of trivial importance. Later in the book, when Guy mistakenly thinks Harriet has died, Edwina tries to win his heart and asks him out to dinner. She dresses up in her most elegant clothes and Guy insists on going to a grubby, low class restaurant because he knows his friends will be there. Without even realizing that Edwina is putting the moves on him, he abandons her, leaving her to take a taxi home alone while Guy goes off to drink. The problem isn’t that Guy is cruel or heartless; he just doesn’t acknowledge that women are anything other than ornaments or pets. Guy’s vision is flawed, literally and symbolically. He wears glasses because of near-sightedness, but he is also myopic in his outlook on life. He often can not see the obvious or what is right in front of his face. The bigger picture always seems to elude his recognition. Even his optimism is naive and unnerving to the point where Harrier sometimes worries about his safety.

Guy isn’t entirely bad either. He goes out of his way to help anybody in need. His dedication to helping the downtrodden is admirable to a fault since he is unable to see that the people he helps are merely using him, usually to get meals or, more importantly, alcohol. But Guy shows what he is capable of in his friendship with Simon, offering him unconditional emotional support during his recovery from his injury. Despite all of Guy’s maddening shortcomings, it is hard not to admire his good nature and good intentions. This is the kind of nuanced characterization that makes Olivia Mannin’g work so powerful.

On other the other hand, everything wrong with Guy’s relationship to Harriet is signified by the brooch that Angela gives to Harriet as a gift. The diamond-studded heart design looks gaudy to Guy who takes it away from Harriet, telling her he wants to give to Edwina as a gift. When Harriet tells him she wants to keep it because it means something special to her, he tells her she doesn’t really want it anyways because it is so tacky. He has no consideration for her feelings or for his own conduct. This eventually leads to Harriet leaving him. Edwina later gives the brooch back to Guy, he puts it away and forgets about it and when he finds it again later, he can’t even remember where it came from. The brooch’s cycle of possession among the four people shows how oblivious he is to the presence and subjectivity of the women he associates with. To him, they are insubstantial, meaningless, and easy to forget.

Harriet gives up on Guy and leaves for destinations farther east. She heads off for Syria, meets up with Angela and Castlebar in Lebanon, and the three of them head off to Jerusalem. Guy mistakenly thinks Harriet has died and when she finds this out we learn that the separation causes the two of them to realize how much they love each other. Harriest also learns how to be more independent. The ending is more Victorian than Modern, leaving something to be desired and not entirely credible. It does provide closure to the whole saga though.

Like The Balkan Trilogy, the strongest point here is in the character building and the way the people interact. Almost through the use of dialogue along, each member of the story takes on a unique life of their own that stays consistent throughout the whole book. You can feel like you personally know each of them and it is easy to identify with Harriet, seeing the world through her eyes no matter what your gender may be. It is a portrait of a flawed humanity that gently reminds us that we need to accept people as they are and find a way to be comfortable with that. Harriet can not fix Guy’s ignorance, but she can find a way to deal with it and make the best of their imperfect relationship. Olivia Manning’s writing also makes it clear what it feels like to live in a male dominated world where women are seen but not heard and, most of the time, hardly even seen. And her writing never degenerates into bitterness or misanthropy. There is a certain kind of resignation to the characters’ imperfections, a certain kind of patience that reminds us of the need to tolerate people’s imperfections rather than wasting our lives trying to change people who don’t want to be changed.

Compared to The Balkan Trilogy, this was a little bit of a let down. In the previous novels, the encroaching Nazi menace that followed Guy and Harriet as they bumbled through life barely holding their marriage together made the whole narrative that much more unsettling. But here, while they reside in Cairo, the Nazis and the Allies fight off in the distance of the desert. While some passages depict Simon in combat, the story of Guy and Harriet continues on in its day to day routines while the war is little more than rumors and some distant noise in the background. There isn’t much dramatic tension between the two strands of the story line and that makes for some less exciting reading. Also, by replacing the subplot of the parasitical and unforgettable Yakimov with the subplot of Simon’s struggles, a lot of the tension in this second cycle of novelettes is lost as well.

The Levant Trilogy may be slightly less engaging than The Balkan Trilogy, but if you’ve read that one first, then The Levant Trilogy does a sufficient job of tying up the loose threads of Guy and Harriet’s marriage. If anything, if you are a male reader it will open your eyes to the way some women might see their marriages in a way that no other novel can. And if you are a woman, you might be able to relate. Of course, there are a lot of other themes in the book, but you just have to read it to experience it all. It is an easy book to read and understand; like Kurt Vonnegut said, “Writing something that is easy to read is the most difficult thing a writer can do.” Olivia Manning has mastered the art of writing something that is easy to follow without sacrificing depth, complexity, or insight. This is an excellent achievement.