Customer Reviews

What We Don't Know about Children

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This is a genuine horror story for parents, because it's as real as the possibility of your children and some of the neighborhood kids they've grown up with being out of sight for a few hours each day.

In brief, it's about a 10-year-old girl who becomes the playmate of a 15-year-old boy and his friends. It goes downhill from there. Fantasy? Not likely. It's real. A child does not have to be very old to play "Let's put the car in the garage." Kids are infinitely curious. This isn't a parable about what kids are liable do when they're left alone; it's a horror story about parents' fears of the modern world.

Back in 1954, at the height of fears about the Cold War, atomic bomb and the very real horrors from the atrocities of World War II, William Golding wrote "Lord of the Flies." It was about a group of British boys stranded on a desert isle who turn to utter primitive savagery among themselves, a parable of the nuclear age.

Now, the Cold War has gone away. In its place, we have blatant sexuality in films, on TV and saturating the ad industry. Lingerie ads in today's family magazines are more daring than explicit pictures would have been in "men's magazines" in 1954. Kids see it all; most ignore it, laugh it off or reject it. Some don't. That is the premise of Simona Vinci's story.

There was never any proof that `Lord of the Flies' could become real. No group of British schoolboys was ever abandoned on a deserted island to see how they would react without adult supervision. The premise of Golding's story was that all people are savages just under the shallow veneer of civilization.

Today, are 15-year-old boys left alone? Are 10-year-old girls in sight at all times. If not, what are they doing? Would you trust your 10-year-old with a 15-year old from just down the block? Especially one with his own motorbike. When did the game end and what took your kids so long to get home? When does choir practice end and how long does it take your kids to get home? How innocent are modern kids? Watch Jerry Springer or any of his clones to learn what kids know and do on their own. Remember, your kids are also watching Springer?

This isn't a "Forever" by Judy Blume, an idyllic picture of tender consensual sex among teenyboppers. It isn't about "Speak" by Laurie Haise Anderson, about a ninth-grader who's been raped. There are any number of fact-based books describing real life; Vinci writes a horror story, "this could be happening ..." Blume implies teen sex is wonderful, sweet, gentle and innocent; Vinci says 10-year-old girls can be used and abused by 15-year-old boys, and the result isn't nice.

In 1954, "Lord of the Flies" was hailed by critics and sold all of 2,500 copies in its first US edition. It wasn't until 1959, when it was published as a paperback and picked up by teens and college students, that became a runaway success. After all, it couldn't really be true. The same needs to happen with this book. It will make parents think, and to "talk" more than "tell." Could some version of it come true? Well, I've known of a dozen or more 12-year-old girls with babies.

Vinci wrote a fantasy, which could be true; but even she could be shocked by real life. "Lord of the Flies" has been on school reading lists for almost 40 years; it's time this book was added to the "thinking list" of parents.

First there is the title. In its original Italian it reads "Dei Bambini Non Si Sa Niente" which translates easily (despite my limited Italian) into "Nothing Is Known About Children." The British translation of the book is called "A Game We Play;" and now comes the American version "What We Don't Know..." A book so hard to title usually reflects murkiness of content, as in this case.

Critics (From London's 'The Independent on Sunday" and "The Evening Standard") have compared this book to Golding's "The Lord of The Flies." That is a flimsy and unsustainable comparison: "Lord of The Flies" is an exquisitely crafted novel depicting the social evolution and intrinsic cruelty of a group of children deprived of adults, while this is a poorly sketched novella of sexual experimentation ending in an accidental tragedy. The two books are comparable only in that they involve children being cruel to one another, which is hardly a unique concept in fiction.

While the prose of this book is remarkably appealing, the story that is told is at once too complex and too abbreviated, and its storyline too contrived and intentionally shocking to be taken seriously. The work cannot carry its assigned weightiness. There is no room in the book's scant number of pages (about 150) to pull off the type of deep characterizations needed to make the action verisimilar. Yes, children are quite capable of outrageous acts, but writers should lay the literary foundation needed for readers to believe that these particular children are capable of these particular (evil) acts. The book fails to convince in this respect, and therefore the sexual actions of the children are both grotesque and devoid of meaning because we (the readers) stopped believing in the story around page 25.

"What We Don't Know About Children" seems insignificant compared to what its author does not know about writing novels. The book is easily finished in one sitting, but even so I cannot recommend it. A brisk walk or a crossword puzzle are clearly far superior activities to spending time with this book.

There seems to be many things wrong with this novel. The main reason would be lack of character development. I finished this in an hour. Would I have cared more about these five children if I knew a little more about them? Or is that the point? Am I supposed to take the thinly described characters and mold them in my own mind? I just couldn't get past the fact that they were merely names on a page. Maybe the book lost something in translation, I don't know.

We begin with Martina, a ten-year-old girl on the edge of a cornfield, singing. Slowly we are introduced to the other four main players in their "game", but Martina is the only one who is of any substance here. She is the only one we ever feel anything for. The story of these five children feels like it could have been something more, but it is short and stunted.

The things they do to each other is grittily described, but with detachment. I felt the writer should have spent more time on letting us know the characters a little more. As it is, the story winds up too quickly and disappoints. While it is disturbing and unsettling, the end result is empty. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone.

A bone chilling coming of age story - seemingly innocent children, polluted by adult influence and sexual images, are capable of atrocities that nightmares are made of.....I know it gave me a few. The novel starts with a forelorn ten-year old, Katrina, singing alone and wondering why no one of her old crowd gets together anymore. When you finish the story you realize just how creepy the beginning of the story was and how accurately it foretells the horrors to come. One reviewer complained about how they felt no connection to the characters in this story - that would be an extremely good thing! The whole point of this story is how the adult world perverted the innocent fumblings of budding sexuality and created these cold unfeeling and scarred children who will turn into scary adults. The usual intimacy associated with these forays are turned into isolating and cold sexual deviant acts. What effect would this experience have on young impressionable children? The answer is given with no holds barred. I appreciated the way this disturbing subject was dealt with - there is no tabloid graphic storytelling here yet the horror is still relayed. Should we stand back in abhorrence and point accusing fingers or take responsibility? This story is set in the countryside of Italy but the setting could be anywhere, don't fool yourself. If you deny the possibility then have something in common with the parents of these children who were sent out to play in the courtyard.

I found this book difficult to put down. Not because of the normal reasons one wants to continue reading, but because of the hope of an ending where the horror of these children would end. Perhaps the horror did end for one child. This was an extremely disturbing view of life.

I thought the plot went too far. I don't think the pornographic images they were seeing at the end are that widespread. My kids don't watch TV and so, no, they don't watch "Jerry Springer." And we live in the city so I do know where they are all the time. The book was sickening but it was well-written; very effective at making the reader feel sick. I do think the point was taken so far it was lost.

I am very disturbed about the subject of this book and its review in the New York Times Book Review. It is a work of fiction. Clearly it describes both the external manipulation of children by adults and their vulnerability to exploitation by those adults and children of their own age. My question is this: Did the author need to make this point by using such a destructive context? Or was the context self-serving for the author...to produce such sensationalized work that it would be noted for its content rather than its merit as a novel. I am disturbed by what this novel says about our moral culture and the popularity of abuse/dis-function novels. I believe we are better than this. And if we are not, we have great cause to worry about our future.