The Man Who Loved Children : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: One of the best novels of the 20th century
Review: "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.

Rating:
Summary: The Excessive Portrait of a Dark and Troubled Family
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Dark but enthralling
Review: The characters in this book are fascinating, but the prose is a terrible chore to read. The father, for example, talks constantly in baby talk to his kids. Here's a quote:

"Now we'll have to work up a schedule. And fustest, you must write to your pore little Sam ebbly week and tell how 'tis tuh hum; and second, you must keep a record of the birds and hanni-miles wot visit Tohoga House..."

Maybe you can read that for hundreds of pages, but I can't. I ended up just skipping the passages where the father speaks to his children.

Stead's most common strategy for character development is for her characters to give long lectures out loud (either to themselves or to an audience), and these lectures are tedious and repetitive.

And finally, if you do get the book, don't read the introduction by Doris Lessing until you're done with the novel. Apparently the publisher decided it was all right to provide an introduction that gives away key events in the story.

Rating:
Summary: Masterpiece, but dark. Don't read the "introduction" first
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman*
Review: The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead is a rare literary masterpiece. It tells the tale of the inner life of the Pollit family (Sam and Henny Pollit with 6 children). The novel is representative of Christina Stead's past. And Louie, the protagonist, is of course, a version of young Stead who grew up in Sydney.

The Man Who Loved Children is a novel about power structures within relationships. I really enjoyed Stead's genius with the monologue, Henny Pollit's excessive and abject speeches and Sam Pollit's frightening idealistic speeches that transform the entire world into a homogenous suburb. The novel is full of amazing realistic and violent detail.

Don't reach for this book if you want to relax or looking for an exciting plot. This is a book that resists easy reading. Unfortunately, the novel has never received the popularity it deserved because it was out of print for some years, making a comeback only in the 1960s when it was popularised in the U.S.

*Taken from James Joyce's Modernist masterpiece- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Rating:
Summary: Dark but enthralling
Review: 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...