Customer Reviews

The Man Who Loved Children

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4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Many years ago I happened to ask a student of mine in Melbourne, a mature woman whom I didn't even know very well, what was the best book that she'd ever read. She replied that it was certainly Christina Stead's THE MAN WHO LOVED CHILDREN. I was stunned because I had never even heard of the author. Eight years later, in the middle of a howling Patagonian wilderness, I traded some bad novels with an Australian traveler for that very book and read it immediately with great anticipation. No doubt this is a great book. The depth of psychological characterization of each member of this painfully dysfunctional (older vocab.=messed up) family is truly amazing. The slow building up of each character absorbs the reader, the ultimate disappointment of all the relationships is a marvelous antidote to the idealistic optimism that prevails in Hollywood and beyond. Still, I felt that the author could have cut some sections, or done away with some extraneous side descriptions. The only other question I have is why Stead chose to write about Americans, with whose language peculiarities she was not so familiar, instead of Australians or even Britishers, whose particular dialects she must have known better. I have never been able to solve this problem because I never meet anyone with whom I could discuss the book. It certainly is one of the least-known great novels of the 20th century.

Angela Carter, a literary firecracker who had much to say about the dark pathologies of the family, once suggested that if she had to choose a representative statement for the collected works of Christina Stead, she'd quote William Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell": "Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to human existence." And while I have not read the entirety of Stead's fictional work, the appropriateness of Carter's characterization rings true with every word, every narrative turn and stylistic nuance, of Stead's regrettably little-read classic, "The Man Who Loved Children", even though it is a book which veers sharply toward one side of the Blakeian contraries-those of "Repulsion" and "Energy" and "Hate"-in its dialectic.

"The Man Who Loved Children" tells the story of a family, the Pollitts, who live in the Washington-Baltimore area in the 1930s, in the Age of Roosevelt and the Depression. But to say simply that it tells the story of a family is misleading. For "The Man Who Loved Children" does not merely tell a story, it makes the reader's skin crawl in the discomfiting darkness of a family dominated by discord, disfunction, and abuse. It is is book which deftly, yet idiosyncratically, thrusts the reader into the emotional and psychic turbulence of the family's day-to-day existence, telling its story with a richness and texture of dialogue that is nearly suffocating in its intensity. It is a book whose main character, Sam Pollitt, is so repulsive in the degradation of his hapless wife and the pathological manipulation and abuse of his children, that no less a critic than Randall Jarrell has suggested that it makes the male reader worry, "Ought I to be a man?" And it is, finally, a book which-perhaps more than any other work of fiction-makes the reader wrenchingly experience the saturating discomfort of a familial hell on earth, where the father and mother do not speak to each other (except in argument, abuse or threat) and where each child becomes the emotional victim of this horrible relationship and of their overbearing and manipulative father, Sam, the man who loved children.

Christina Stead's vision and writing in "The Man Who Loved Children" is excessive and troubling. It is also profound and memorable, a sharply etched portrait of the dark side of the family.

"The Man Who Loved Children" is as overwhelming as Tolstoy's "War and Peace" in that it creates the reality in which the reader exists during the time it takes to read it. But it is, in many ways, the obverse of "War and Peace". It is a remarkable depiction of a family, and it moves inward rather than outward. It is a stunning piece of fiction, and is certainly one of the ten best novels of the century. Any real reader should be familiar with this book.

This heart-rending novel bleeds. It sweats. It screams. It is so vividly written that you truly feel each character's pain in this most dysfuntional of families. Every character, from the deluded patriarch to his betrayed son, is well drawn and distinct. The plot tightens the screws continually until the climax which is amazing in intensity. I read the last 200 pages of this book in one sitting and was wrung out by the end (the first time a book has ever done that to me!)

I note above the criticism that this book has characters offering long baroque speeches. This is probably true. It's also probably too long. Regardless, you will never read a book as vivid, terrifying, painful yet life affirming as this one. It should be read by everyone who loves great literature.

I would recommend this book to anyone that wants to experience the trials of a smart family coping and not coping with their ignorance, unemployment, poverty, conflicts of morality and vision. Witness the dynamics of the Pollit family - depictions of life on a magnitude of veracity itself. Proving as no other twentieth century novel Tolstoy's thesis as stated in Anna Karenina "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Here we find literary documentation of an engaging, charming, joyful group with a unique brand of unhappiness as bitter as madness. Madness of high acidity - both propositions packaged in to one loose baggy flowing monster. An incredible accomplishment.

The introduction, which is by Randall Jarell (not Doris Lessing) was originally intended as an Afterword, and is so published in previous editions of the book.

That's why it gives away the plot.

I have no idea why the idiot publisher put it first this time.

Anyway, while it takes some patience to get through Sam's babytalk and Henny's rages, there is gold all the way through. The inner life of a house and family is conveyed as in few other books, with vividness and specificity.

Just don't expect to like any of the characters, and you will be rewarded with high drama and deep insight.

The story of a very bad marriage between Sam, who is completely out of touch with reality, and Henny, consumed by bitterness. The story is told from each of their points of view, as well as some of their many children (in particular a child from Sam's first marriage who's just entering adolescence), and, as a rare treat, the occasional outsider. The family struggles with growing poverty, but much more damaging to everyone involved is the stubbornness of the parents and their hatred for each other...I didn't think this book was too long. I found it gripping and absorbing the whole way through--suspenseful, in fact. Ms. Stead manages to do what too few writers can: write characters who are deeply flawed and even unlikeable but who still compel us to take a great interest in them and what happens to them. This book kind of reminds me of some of Faulkner's better novels, but less condescending towards its characters and more insightful...

The definitive dysfunctional family novel. Unbelievable writing. A great plot, great characters, smart, scathing social commentary. Historical signifance. Kind of a 20th centruy Dickensian novel. If you love Dickens, but want something more modern, this is it.

I think this book is one of th first books I ever read that pulled me in head over heels, and I've just reread it and am bowled over again by coming up for air after being inside the family of the Pollits. This book is painful but absolutely brilliant, and no one who loves literature should live his life without reading this book.

There are amazing things in THE MAN WHO LOVED CHILDREN and it deserves to be read. But its appreciations, from the famous essay by Randall Jarrell to one by Doris Lessing to the recent piece by Jonathan Franzen in the TIMES, never mention the big problem that keeps many readers from finishing it. The first third of the book is powerful and so is the last third. But the middle third sits dead in the water. Much of the drama of the book comes from the poisonous marriage of Sam and Henny; their poison fuels the novel. But Sam goes to Asia around page 150 and doesn't return until page 315. The book dies while he's gone. Only the most patient, smitten reader can get through this dead patch. But the reader should plow on because the last section is amazing. The family becomes poor, and so gradually they don't notice it and the reader doesn't notice either. Only when we see the Pollitts through the eyes of a visiting teacher do we see their squalor. The final scene with Henny and her stepdaughter, Louisa, is extraordinary.

It's a sad, raw, unshapely book and I wish someone would turn it into a movie so the problem could be fixed. Alan Parker's film, SHOOT THE MOON, caught some of the family atmosphere that Stead did so well. But I will continue to recommend the book with the warning that there are chapters you might want to skim.