What starts as an innocent (not quite the right word) little game suddenly descends into barbaric acts of torture. Most kids take this as part of interaction with adults, but some could clearly take it as enough of an offense to take action in the right circumstances, if not to declare a sort of war with that adult. Through alternating viewpoints, the reader gets a glimpse into the minds of the children, as well as their 20-year-old babysitter’s physical and emotional suffering.

Reminiscent of the Lord of the Flies, a lost treasure in transgressional fiction, this is a terrifying tale of the evil that lurks inside curious and innocent minds when faced with opportunity devoid of all consequences and barriers. Shocking and sickening, yet tender and nakedly human, you will never forget reading this one, I promise.Dianne – initially described as being tall and boring to look at (when reading this I had to remind myself that a man in his mid-forties writing this book, would still believe a woman would be longing for a girlish figure and to have the boy’s attention, especially in the 1970’s) she blossoms into a young woman by the end. Immature, terrifying people who do whatever they feel like because they can and think up convoluted justifications for why they should hurt a human being as part of their game, but people nonetheless. While the rape is a physical assault, the use of it in this story is more for the psychological damage it inflicts on Barbara and the beginning of the transformation of John. Perhaps it’s because this dude is an immigrant and looked down upon (it was the 70s), although I’m still not so sure. Not If They Enjoyed It" Rationalization: The book most certainly doesn't justify it, but played with the second time Barbara is raped by Johnny; as the text states, "it is possible to be made to enjoy.

On the most part the writing was pretty decent, although – there were lots – of these – bloody dashes! I imagine if you are reading this review you fall under 1 of 3 categories: 1) You've already read this book, so you are curious about my opinion, 2) you want to read this book, in which case you should stop reading this right now because spoilers lurk ahead, or 3) you have no intention of ever reading this book, and yet you are drawn to my review out of curiosity. Barbara the kindly, loving babysitter wakes up to find herself drugged, gagged and tied up to the bed, one of her charge on a chair in the corner. Some speculate that it was very loosely inspired by the Sylvia Likens case (which was a tragedy of its own, also involving kids being very cruel to a teen girl, but was of a very different nature than this book). She can’t believe that this has happened, but she still believes that she’ll be able to either overpower or outsmart the kids.all while still bound and gagged, but relents at the last second because she can't bear to hurt Dianne any more than she already is. Each child was consumed by his own individual lust and caught up with the others in sadistic manipulation and passion, until finally, step by step, their grim game strips away the layers of childishness to reveal the vicious psyche, conceived in evil and educated in society's sophisticated violence, that lies always within civilized men.

It offers a very real look at the minds of both the children and Barbara in her deteriorating state over the course of the book and how easily things can slip from perfectly normal to being horrific over the course of a single week. And so we are left with incredibly long chapters of pure cruelty and torture of a helpless woman with nothing to induce empathy or horror in the witnessing reader. We don't really get to know these kids or Barbara before she's taken hostage and we, the reader, like Barbara don't get any respite or relaxation from the mounting tension as things turn seriously violent and more extreme. There seems to be no redeeming human quality in them, no chance that one could have a spark of realization of what they are doing to a fellow human being and save their victim.Barbara has, and I’d think that someone in her position would be a bit more savage and desperate than she was.