Customer Reviews

Let's Go Play at the Adams

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

A young babysitter, Barbara, wakes up one morning to find that she's tied spreadeagled to her bed. The kids have complete control of her now, and free rein over the house, and there's no-one within half a mile to interfere - and their parents are not due back for a whole week. What might possibly happen within that week? Barbara is helpless, and fearful of what might be in store for her.

And that is only the beginning: there are many interesting things to try out on her, many interesting ways of tying her up; a week is a very long time... a mini-eternity....

This book is one of the most terrifying and claustrophobic novels I have ever read, and leaves you wrung out and shaking. For once, the cover blurb is no idle boast. ("A novel more terrifying than LORD OF THE FLIES & THE EXORCIST combined!" "A horror tale that will harrow you and haunt you long after you have finished it.")

This is the ultimate book about the effects - physical, mental, and emotional - of long-term, close confinement. It is the last word about what it is like to be tied up helplessly; after this, every other book I have read in which someone is bound is, with but one exception, shallow and unconvincing by comparison in its depiction of being bound. This novel should be read by any fiction writer who wishes to convincingly portray what it is like to be tied up for prolonged periods: the terror, the helplessness, the gibbering mind, the internal dialogues, the physical restlessness which itself torments. Just *reading* it makes you feel the agony of all this yourself. The challenge for authors would be to write about confinement just as well as this novel, but without copying it.

Perhaps the only comparable novel I know of is Stephen King's "Gerald's Game", probably the ultimate handcuff novel, which is, however, completely different - but just as effective.

It is regrettable that Mendal Johnson never published any novels other than this. This was his only novel - his only published one, at least - and at the time of his death in 1976 he was working on three other novels.

But writing of such searing, burning intensity lifts it above the commonplace and speaks of a substantial writing talent. It also leaves you wondering whether the author was simply writing a novel, or whether he was expressing something deep inside him that demanded expression, perhaps born of profound fears, or some personal experience.

The psychology of the vicious kids is chillingly portrayed, and Barbara's terror is heart-wrenching. Mendal Johnson should have had a meteoric rise in a career as a highly skilled writer of psychologically-oriented horror, yet he remains obscure. Possibly the darkness of his story prevented it from becoming more popular on the mass market. His meagre output, itself puzzling in the light of his great writing skill and perceptiveness, might have also counted against his becoming better-known.

It is interesting to observe that Steve Vance's horror novel "The Abyss" undoubtedly refers to Johnson's novel at great length (without resorting to plagiarism). Johnson's novel is mentioned in "The Abyss" as a novel some of Vance's characters had read, and this inspired the actions of some of them. However, "Let's Go Play at the Adams'" is not mentioned by name, just alluded to, and the author's first name is changed from Mendal to Martin, and his surname not mentioned at all. I can only presume this was for legal reasons, although there is no reason to think there would be legal problems anyway with simply alluding to another novel; but the plot referred to is so similar that it cannot be coincidence.

And it is interesting that, towards the end, Vance's novel includes a drug-induced vision one his characters has in which she actually visits Martin's (Mendal's) widow and learns more about him and the circumstances in which he died. However, although this information given by Vance about Martin roughly corresponds with Mendal Johnson's life with regard to time of death and the like, it should be noted that the detailed circumstances around Martin's death as described in "The Abyss" are fictional only, and do not correspond to any known facts about Mendal Johnson.

The details of Johnson's life and career still seem a little hazy, although my thanks go to Ray Girvan, Barry Schneebeli (who both reviewed the novel on this page), and Steve Vance for various pieces of information which helped me sketch out a few facts about Johnson here. If anyone who reads this review knows more about Johnson or his work, I'd love to hear from you.

It is interesting also that Barry Schneebeli has written a so-far unpublished sequel to this novel, called "Game's End", which explores the aftermath of the events related by Johnson.

--- NOTE: --- My second review of this book on this page is posted with Amazon's permission. My original review here, posted a year ago, unfortunately got damaged somewhere along the line, and when I wrote to Amazon about this, they suggested that it be removed, and that I repost it. Accordingly, I was glad to bring it up to date and to be able to answer some of the questions about Johnson that I posed in the original version.

Johnson relates an extremely disturbing view of human nature. He mingles perspectives of individual motivation and group psychology and chillingly portrays what could happen when individuals surrender themselves to a group. At the end of the book I felt immense sorrow, not only for Barbara, the innocent victim, but also for the author's view of the condition of humanity and his view of human motivation.

I finished this book emotionally wrung-out, shaking and wondering if all the good has gone out of the world. How did the children's game get so out of hand? I did not want the book to end where it did, the way it did. I wanted retribution for the evil, justice for the victim. At least a review of how the children turned out. For me, that would have made the book cleaner, neater and possibly not have left me feeling as I did.

I've failed to find any other books written by Johnson, which is a shame. In this book, he proves to be an excellent storyteller, a master of suspense and of manipulating the reader - never giving anything away too soon, always holding out the promise of hope, of rescue, of sanity. His ability to change perspective from the kids as a group, to the kids themselves and to their victim is very well done. The view of each character's thoughts and the way each action builds upon itself and leads to the next step, the next level of the children's game, is so well portrayed I wonder if Johnson had any background in psychology.

I gave this book the highest rating because it delivers on what it promises. But, in all honesty, I could never recommend it to a friend to read. If a suspense/horror book could be described as too effective in achieving its end, too convincing in its abiltiy to portray terror and too upsetting in its outcome, then Mendal Johnson has written that book.

It's difficult to describe the appeal of this book. It would be naive to deny that at some level, Johnson titillates by drawing heavily on the scenarios of bondage pornography. And yet he simultaneously undermines that titillation by deconstructing any fantasy elements in favour of the likely reality of the main character's growing discomfort and claustrophobia. The resultant impression is tense and highly unsettling. Further distanced from more lurid genres by Johnson's unsensational literate style, this detailed study of the character dynamics of collective evil is an under-rated classic of horror. (Mendal Johnson, incidentally, died in 1976 and never finished any other novels).

Mendal W. Johnson, Let's Go Play at the Adams' (Thomas W. Crowell Books, 1974)

The Sylvia Marie Likens case, colloquially known as the Indiana Torture Slaying, is still producing books over four decades after it happened. This is, in some way, understandable; it was a truly horrific event, the kind of thing that rips the veneer of civilization off a society in a way that your garden variety serial killer/mass murderer/war story doesn't. People became animals, there was a great deal of suffering, and to this day, no one has fully explained exactly what happened during the Summer of 1965 in Indianapolis.

The first of these books, and the loosest in its connection to the case, was Mendal Johnson's shocking and powerful 1974 novel Let's Go Play at the Adams'. When reading it these days, remember that this book is over three decades old, before the idea of extreme horror (or, as we knew it back in the day, splatterpunk) even existed. The infamous film Snuff would not be released for another year and a half or so. Dean Koontz was still writing sci-fi novels and political thrillers, and a young writer whom very few people had ever heard of, mostly readers of the euphemistically named "mens' magazines", named Stephen King had sold his first novel, Carrie, which would be released later in the year. This is the scenario under which Mendal Johnson dropped the bomb that is Let's Go Play at the Adams'. And a bomb it surely is.

One cannot read a Likens-based book without comparing it to the gold standard, Jack Ketchum's riveting The Girl Next Door, published eight years later. Ketchum and Johnson take opposite tacks when approaching the case; Ketchum adopts a tone of distracted horror and uses one of the participants in the events as his narrator. Johnson takes third-person omniscient, and his tone is best described as that of a doting father telling his kids a tale. It's a voice that makes absolutely no sense given the subject matter, and that does nothing but heighten the discomfort. And when Johnson gets going, in the book's climax, it becomes so inappropriate as to make the events even more horrible. Johnson does not waver from his tome for a single sentence. If you read reviews written by those who read the book (or were forbidden by their parents to read the book, and did so anyway) at the time it came out, there's almost a sense of evil about Mendal Johnson's words. This sounds silly and stupid in the cold, harsh light of day, but I finished this novel not two hours ago-- and I can see where these people are coming from. Now, anyone who follows my reviews knows that I'm a reader of hardcore horror. A big fan. I've read books widely advertised as the most brutal in the genre and come away from them without anything even close to this feeling. This, folks, is the real deal, a novel so far ahead of its time that when it came out, no one knew what to do with it. I'm surprised it actually found a publisher. (It is now long out of print, and this should be rectified immediately.)

Continuing with the comparison, while Ketchum's book realizes the innate horror of the situation through repeatedly desensitizing the reader to the horror of the events, and then resensitizing through some small act that reminds you that there are humans involved in this unexplainable mess, Johnson take the build-suspense approach. He spends more time in the heads of his characters than he does describing their actions. We know what they're thinking at all times. We see the inevitable conclusion coming, but we can't believe it will. Then comes the climax-- the single real scene of violence in the novel-- and it is unimaginably brutal, all the more so because it is unique within the framework of the novel. (It helps, too, that the chapter which this scene closes is an extra added punch of humanity for each of the characters.) Johnson has done everything he could to make sure you see every one of these characters as human, and it works.

Where Johnson doesn't measure up to Ketchum is that Ketchum preserved the scariest thing about the Likens case-- the simple reasonlessness of the torture and murder of this girl. Johnson ascribes the kids a motive, and here, he takes the coward's way out, blaming the media. The kids do what they do because they saw it on television. Johnson also shows a rampant sexism throughout the novel, though it would be possible to argue that this is a psychological tactic to get into the reader's head and make Barbara, the girl based on Likens, even more pathetic. (If so, it does work.)

Still, despite its very large flaws, Let's Go Play at the Adams' is a debut novel of stunning, almost singular, power, and it richly deserves to be resurrected in all its glory. It's a natural for today's extreme-horror fans. We will always wonder if Mendal Johnson was a one-novel wonder, or whether this would have been the beginning of a career that would have eclipsed that of King and Koontz, for Mendal Johnson died in 1976 without having ever completed another novel.

Read this, and wonder what could have been. **** ½

My aunt and I used to exchange novels. We were both avid readers. When she finished reading hers, she would pass them to me. I would read them and pass them on to others, or either donate them to the library. My aunt purchased "Let's Go Play at The Adams" at a used book store about 20 years ago, read it, then sent it my way. Once I started reading it, I could not let it go. When I was done with that book, I destroyed it. Even today, 20 years later, I cannot get that book out of my mind. It crossed my mind this morning, and I decided to do a search on the Net to see what was I could find, which led me here.

It was very well written, but I would not recommend it to anyone. That was the most disturbing book I have ever read.

Mendal Johnson's "Let's Go Play at the Adams'" is a disturbing and truly horrifying study of human nature. The plot revolves around a group of five Maryland children/teens (the youngest ten, the oldest seventeen) who, as part of a "game," capture a twenty-year-old young woman named Barbara and hold her prisoner for almost a week. Barbara is the baby-sitter, Mom and Dad are in Europe, and the kids get a big kick out of flipping the power structure, even if it's just for a week. Barbara is chloroformed, bound, gagged, and held prisoner in the guest room. The kids manage the house, stay up late, eat ice cream, and go swimming whenever they want. That's how it starts. Later, things get much darker.

Some have suggested the Johnson's novel was inspired by the real-life murder of sixteen-year-old Sylvia Likens (the inspiration for the film "An American Crime," as well as Jack Ketchum's horror-porn novel, "The Girl Next Door"). I reject this, however - "Adams'" really has nothing at all to do with the Likens case. Likens was the victim of poverty, parental neglect, madness, and mob rule - nothing could be farther from the upscale professional world of Johnson's novel. The only connection between this novel and the Likens case is that the victim in both is a young girl (Likens was 16, Barbara is 20) and that most of the abusers are children/teens. Likens' abuse was begun by her foster mother - the children simply followed-the-leader; they felt that their cruelty was somehow sanctioned because "permission" had been granted. There was never any intent to murder Sylvia Likens - in fact, there was never any intent at all. "Adams'" is about something very different. The five children/teens involved have a club, play a game, and kidnap/abuse Barbara as part of it. In the beginning, they are doing it "because we can." Later, the decisions they make are logical, carefully orchestrated, and democratically enacted. They vote on whether or not to kill Barbara. They have meetings to decide how to kill her. Interestingly, Ketchum's novel ("The Girl Next Door"), which was admittedly inspired by the Likens case, was also heavily influenced by "Adams'." Ketchum uses the idea of a perverse "game" among children as part of the background for his story - this was not part of the Likens case, but is certainly at the core of "Adams'."

"Adams'" actually has a lot more in common with such films as "Last Summer," in which a group of teens (including a young Barbara Hershey) end up brutally abusing one of their so-called friends, or "The Sailor who Fell From Grace With the Sea," in which a young boy ends up murdering (and dissecting) his mother's lover. These are stories about children untamed (or what children can do before they are "broken" by adult rules and society - this is a phrase specifically used in "Adams'"). The novel is horrific not because of what these five children do to this young woman, but because of how little it bothers them and how easily they begin to see her as outside of humanity. Actually, the descriptions of abuse are quite tame, especially by current standards (fans of Ketchum's work, for instance, are likely to be disappointed). This is a very literary novel, with a detached omniscient narrator who is not after a prurient response from his readers. We hear few details of Barbara's rape, and even the final murder scene is told in such matter-of-fact language that the horror of it seems almost commonplace (which of course makes it all the more horrible). What never seems commonplace is the children's easy acceptance of murder as part of the game they call life. As Dianne, one of Barbara's tormentors explains, it's "the game that everyone plays. The game of who wins the game. People kill people. Losers lose." In a way, this is what we really do believe. But, as adults, as functioning members of a social world, we can't admit it.

William Golding, in "Lord of the Flies," tells us what schoolchildren are capable of without the influence of adults and rules and laws and police. Mendal Johnson's view of human nature is even darker than Golding's. His schoolchildren don't need to be stranded on a desert island to see their inner beast released - they need only the opportunity, the means, and the courage. This, says Johnson, is what we all are - we're little demons who want nothing more than to win; which means making sure someone else is going to lose. It's not an easy novel to read. And if it leaves you feeling torn apart when you finally finish it, maybe that's a good thing.

An extremely horrific novel about the absence of compassion given the proper set of circumstances. The tale concerns a pretty 20-yr-old baby-sitter who finds herself waking up one morning tied to her bed by the kids she is watching over. Only children, they have older friends who have ideas of their own as to what can and should be done to their playmate/captive and what starts as a simple prank ends in a nightmare from which there is no awakening. What makes it such a disturbing yarn is that the baby-sitter is such a friendly, trusting girl, and all readers--male as well as female--can easily identify with her. The climax to this book is one of the most heart-wrenching in American Literature. Brilliantly written, it has become a cult classic and the author has become something of a legend, having passed away some years ago without having another novel published.

I really have no idea what to rate this. I mean, Let's Go Play at the Adams is one book that I truly regret reading. I'm intentionally ignoring Twilight and Companions of the Night (they were two of the worst books I've ever read) because those really didn't make me feel physically ill while reading them. Let's Go Play at the Adams did. I don't regret reading it because it was terribly written or because it was complete and utter crap, but rather because it was just so disturbing and horrifying.

I read The Girl Next Door about 8 months ago and I feel the need to mention that book in this review because it and Let's Go Play at the Adams sort of go hand in hand. They deal with the same premise: a young woman who gets captured and tortured by a bunch of children. While The Girl Next Door was disturbing, I think Let's Go Play at the Adams was even more so. I had seen The Girl Next Door movie before I read the book so I didn't go in there blind. I knew what was going to happen. And while I was shocked and horrified, I didn't have that sense of apprehension because the movie stuck very close to the book. In Let's Go Play at the Adams' I was a total wreck. I was literally shaking. I couldn't take the not knowing what was going to happen that I read the last few pages to see what happened and then went back and finished. And I NEVER do that. It's just that the not knowing what's going to happen is worse.

I guess another reason why this book traumatized me more than The Girl Next Door is that in TGND while the kids were also terrible, you have to understand that a big reason they were inflicting this cruelty is because they had the permission of a sadistic adult whom they trusted. In Let's Go Play at the Adams' you have kids who know what they're doing is wrong, who know they could get in trouble by doing this, yet do it anyway. It's chilling. And I couldn't help but wonder with the captive "Why? Why? Why?" I guess what's even more terrifying was the underlying message. If children are capable of this cruelty than, really, who isn't? Are we all just ticking time bombs? Once an opportunity to inflict pain presents itself, would we do it? These are doubts that I really try not to dwell in when it comes to my "pleasure" reading.

So, Let's Go Play at the Adams was terrible. It was superbly written and the author suprisingly got into the inner psyches of the children really well. Due to this, I'm rating it four stars. I can't rate it five because it was too disturbing for me. I finished it about a half hour ago and I'm still shaking. I haven't sufficiently calmed down yet. I was mess while reading it and I'm a mess even though I finished it. I suspect that this will be one book that will haunt me for a long time. Do I recommend it? I don't really think that I do. If you're disturbed easily or even semi-easily I suggest you stay far, far away from this book.

I originally bought the book in paperback years ago with the idea that it would be a good, quick, trashy read when I was in that kind of mood. Wow! Was I caught off-guard on this one. This book put me through an emotional wringer. When I put the book down, I was shaking--I couldn't get over it and I thought about it for quite awhile. Its been out of print for awhile, but if you find a used copy or can get it at your library, its worth the effort. Just be prepared for an incredibly intense experience.

Chronic alcoholic Mendal Johnson's only novel Let's Go Play At The Adams' is compelling reading. No doubt about it. But I can't say I recommend it. This absolutely amoral account of the torture-slaying of a young women by a group of children and teens is very well written and this separates it far from most splatterpunk horror. The depictions of torture and sociopathic behavior obviously are written to disturb the reader. Johnson attempts to show us the children's depravity through their strange disaffection that will allow them to kill a person for no other reason than that they can. He attempts a rationalization that the children murder as a response to the rebuke of their inate evil by the presense of goodness in the victim. Johnson paints a very graphic yet poetic picture of this dichotemy and the deep questions of the nature of good and evil.

Okay, then why don't I recommend this book? To fill the mind with the images in LGPATA ultimately serves no purpose either as enlightenment or entertainment. If Mendal Johnson's intent was to shock his audience then he succeeded. But that is the sum total of his success. I believe his purpose was to "exorcise" (or maybe "exercise") his own demons as he could not have believed this novel would ever sell more than a few copies given the subject matter. So money could not be his motivation. Johnson died only two years after the publication of this book in 1976 after a long bout of alcoholism ending in cirrhosis of the liver. He was 47. I don't believe this is a coincidence. This man obviously struggled with an inner darkness that booze could not brighten or numb. Read it if you must. Just don't expect to feel glad that you did.