At the B&N Reads blog
Jeff Somers tagged ten literary kids with extremely difficult childhoods, including:
Jack, Julie, Sue, and Tom in The Cement Garden, by Ian McEwan
McEwan’s debut remains a disturbing black mirror to Party of Five. When the kids’ parents die, they hide their mother’s corpse by encasing it in cement in the basement and try to avoid going into the “system.” To say this does not go well for them is an understatement. To say it’s surprising that all that happens is some sociopathic derangement and enthusiastic incest is also an understatement. And the ending is just ambiguous enough that you can’t be certain they all survive—or that they should.
Read about
the other entries on the list.
--Marshal Zeringue
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