Fiction About Childhood for Adults

Image taken from an article about Britain's first playground for adults over sixty.

So my reading continues in an effort to compile the definitive list of books that best evoke the experience of childhood for adults. It started with The Fountain Overflows, a book I thought did just that and beautifully. I included A High Wind in Jamaica, the only other book I'd read in recent years that also had that rare quality. And then I added a number of other books that others suggested. I'm currently making my way through these. I'm only halfway through Christina Stead's The Man Who Loved Children (hailed as a very good but overlooked book by both Randall Jarrell and Jonathan Franzen) and I am not loving it. Unless something rather drastic happens in the second half, I'll be  dumping it unceremoniously from the list. To me, the mother and father seem caricatures rather than characters and the children, too, are little more than a collection of one or two prominent traits each. The eldest girl, the one I'm assumed was based on Stead herself, is treated badly but seems mostly oblivious in an unlikely way to it.  So far it's just an awful, tiresome slog -- both parents are prone to long-winded speeches and rants. I think that reading it with the list in mind has probably coloured my view -- the book is not really about childhood. It is, instead, an adult's very satirical examination, in hindsight, of her parents.  Randall Jarrell claimed that everyone he urged to read this book loved it. To that I say: hunh. Also, herm.

While I've never been a fan of his style, Henry James's What Maisie Knew certainly deserves a place on the list. Instead of saying "Bug off" Henry James would say "If you would please me, I beg you to take yourself off to flutter among the insects, which to a great degree you resemble, as they tremble foolishly on the edge of the breeze and whirl tiresomely through the branches of the trees in the garden, thank you and begone." I often find my thoughts have flung off the end of one of his interminable sentences and right out of the pages of the book. Picture one of those roundabouts at a playground. But Maisie is pitch-perfect as a neglected child desperate to please her parents, a pair of feuding philanderers, and then her step-parents, who also use her as a pawn. I found myself wondering what a modern version of this would be like -- Maisie's personality and plight are even more relevant today when divorce and "blended" families are common. And when divorced parents, in efforts to wound their exes, end by hurting their offspring more. Maybe they should hand out copies of this book with divorce decrees whenever children are involved.

More on these books and the list later. I've also finished The House in Paris (excellent for our purposes) and Loving Sabotage (while not a classic, it's also good).

Comments

[kittenpie]

I would say this about your comments on the Stead book (whcih I haven't read), though: Parents DO seem prone to long speeches and rants when you're a kid... But on the flip side, kids are highly attuned to injustice, so if she's treated badly, I'm sure she'd notice.

[Steph]

That's a great point, kp, about the long speeches and rants...

[Sara O'Leary]

I always thought that the Peanuts cartoons got it right - you're giving your kid some big talk and they're just hearing: MWAH-MWAH-MWAH-MWAH.

That Maisie you've popped up there isn't as pretty as the one I used to have. I actually bought a repro of the painting because I liked it so much - wonder what it was. Oh, all the books I've loved and lost.

You know, I'd love to do a modern revisioning of Maisie ... are you dibbsing the idea? Right now I'm working on a contemporary take on Blithe Spirit. I always thought it would be interesting if it wasn't played as comedy.

[carrie]

I tried to read The Man Who Loved Children about seven years ago but didn't finish.

Some others that might work for your list:
Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid
Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood

[kate]

I also tried to read The Man Who Loved Children and stopped. I just couldn't do it.

[Steph]

Feel free to rewrite Maisie, Sara. I don't think I'll ever get to it. The Blithe Spirit thing sounds interesting.

Kate and Carrie: I'm glad I'm not the only one who couldn't finish it. And Carrie, thanks for the Annie John and Cat's Eye suggestions.

[Maud]

Hmmm... I'm sure there are many more I like, but what comes to mind now is (the first part of) Wide Sargasso Sea.