Group Read, December 2018: The Man Who Loved Children

Our December group read is The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead. Please join the read and post any comments on this thread.

I actually started this a little early because it was in at the library. My first surprise was that it is set in Washington, D.C. I thought I was going to be reading a book set in Australia!

Originally, it was set in Australia ... but apparently no one in the US would have known where that was so...

https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2010/november/1288836098/michelle-de-kretser...

>3 arukiyomi: that's sad! More recently, the excellent light novel Big Little Lies by Australian writer Liane Moriarty is set in a small town in Australia, but the HBO version is set in California. How dull and predictable is that?

>3 arukiyomi: Interesting. There are a lot of DC references in terms of street names, neighborhoods, etc., but there isn't much sense of place, if that makes sense.

I'm about halfway through now. I was very annoyed in the beginning by Sam's "baby talk" that he uses to interact with his kids.

I didn't notice this was the group book this month, and I just finished reading it yesterday.

Yes, the "baby talk" is so incredibly annoying from Sam. I had to put the book down several times because of Sam.

I finished the book this morning. Agree with all the comments above re Sam ("The Man") - infuriating baby talk, irresponsible behaviour and he only appears to have "Loved Children" who were unquestioning of his frequent mental cruelty. I waited for some redemptive aspect of his character to emerge, in vain.

As a (very happily) married man with young children and a large number of in-laws passing through the house each week, I found there was nothing in this family I could relate to - presumably there are family groups that manage to function like this one as the novel is apparently largely autobiographical. I was left wondering what the purpose of the story was, apart perhaps from being a cathartic brain-dump by the author. There are some "big moments" in the story, but they are just speed bumps on the road to ruin rather than turning points.

I was interested to read that the author was Australian and the childhood adapted in to this novel occurred about 5 miles from where I work each day. She has no profile here in Australia, though I understand that her house has a plaque on it; I must wander over and have a look at it for you.

I have picked up a copy at the library, but I haven't started reading yet. (And I'm not necessarily very encouraged by the comments so far...)

>7 puckers: Interesting that the author is not particular well-known in Australia. I thought she was included partly because she was an Australian author and presumably played a role in the development of literature there.

>8 Henrik_Madsen: Stead left Australia in her 20s, wrote this book 10 years later and didn’t return to Australia until she was in her 70s. It is interesting that the New South Wales Premiers Literary Awards (which are well known here) include the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction which I’d not realised until I googled her name for this read.

How much of a profile does Neville Shute have? I bet even David Malouf and Thom Keneally have low profiles in Aus, no?

my review here http://arukiyomi.com/?p=6465

>10 arukiyomi: My parents in Brisbane had quite a few of Shute's novels (in the 1950s and 1960s), and his autobiography, Slide Rule. I don't live in Australia now but AFAIK both Malouf and Keneally are quite visible there (particularly the latter). I have a couple of Malouf's books myself, although essays rather than novels.

>10 arukiyomi: >11 haydninvienna: Agree re Malouf and Keneally - both still well known here. Shute’s A Town Like Alice and On The Beach are better known for their movie/tv adaptations than anything about the author himself. The latter movies profile assisted by Ava Gardner’s alleged quip that Melbourne was the perfect place to make a movie about the end of the world!

As your link at >3 arukiyomi: states, Stead would likely have been more widely read had she not changed the location of the book from Australia to Washington. Like much of the world, Aussies tend to parochialism and can be unforgiving of those who deny their Australian heritage. Peter Carey (another list author) for example has lived in New York for 30 years yet bases most of his books in Australia and remains one of our best known and best loved authors.

I finished this. I could not get over my distaste for Sam and his annoying baby talk. And even more for the way he treated everyone around him. I actually sort of liked the brutal Henny in comparison - at least she was honest with everyone, cruel but honest.

I think that the setting surprised me in the beginning, but actually I thought it was a good rendering of Baltimore and Annapolis. I felt overall like the writing was something I would like in a different book with different characters.

I have completed my read of The Man Who Loved Children, I disliked both the mother and the father and found the whole book rather distasteful and tiring. I read somewhere that these characters were based on the author's family, with the herself being the eldest daughter, Louisa. If so, she has my sympathies. I can see the brilliance in the author's characterizations, but this was not a book that I cared for at all.

My copy arrived from the library today. I will start it when I;ve finished my current read.

You all make me want to read this book again! I loved it. I think that >13 japaul22: is closest to what I remember -- that the father is insidious, somehow, trying to worm his way into your/the children's affections while being quite dreadful, while the mother although dreadful in her own way was at least direct and transparent. But I took it as a portrait of a terribly dysfunctional family.

>3 arukiyomi: I do not understand why they change settings like that? Surely the book should be read as written? And surely readers should not be underestimated - we can cope with reading a book about somewhere different! Not like Australia is that obscure!

I finally finished the book last night, and even though the first 200 pages was a bit of a struggle, the novel really grew on me after Sam's return form Singapore. There is a sense of inescapable tragedy which was hard to let go of.

Sam was obviously an incredibly annoying character. Perhaps the most annoying main character I have met in a novel. Not the most cruel or evil character but the most annoying with his insistence on talking baby-language to his children and incredible self-absorbedness. As >13 japaul22: suggests, Henny is more transparent.

Two thoughts at the end:

Did anyone else see a Peter Pan motive in Sam? His unwillingness to grow up, his suppression of the boys to a blabbering multitude and his misogony read to me like the dark side of Neverland.

In my edition there is a long introduction by Randall Jarrell where he very clearly states that Henny commits suicide. Now, I think she probably did, but is it really that obvious?

>18 Henrik_Madsen: I have not read this since literature studies a LONG time ago, but from memory, Henny did commit suicide in a way as she knowingly drank the poison that Louisa put in the tea.
I am looking forward to reading this again! It certainly made for some heated discussions although I cannot remember anyone trying to defend Sam's behaviour/character! He must be one of the most dysfunctional fathers ever written.

>18 Henrik_Madsen:

Yes, I hadn't though of the term "Peter Pan syndrome", but I definitely noticed that he seemed stuck in childhood. His interaction with his children was weird - a toxic mix of acting with the impulse control of a child but the power of a parent.

I think Henny knew what she was doing when she drank the tea, and so in that respect she did commit suicide, but I also think that Louise has some culpability (as she herself feels). Henny certainly wasn't coming downstairs to commit suicide at that moment. She made an impulsive decision in the moment, probably in a twisted way to punish Louise.

I will say that in the few weeks since I finished this, it's stayed in my mind. I think that despite my dislike of the characters, it's a better book than I originally wanted to give it credit for.

I find that somewhat hard to believe......... I can name many very Australian novels that were big hits in the U.S.: A Town Like Alice, The Thorn Birds, The Light Between Oceans, On the Beach and that is just off the top of my head. No doubt, it is about money, though.

I finally finished this yesterday -- it was really a struggle for me as Sam annoyed me to tears (with the baby talk in particular, but also in the creepy way he seemed to relate to the children.)

>19 JayneCM: >20 japaul22:
Yes, that is how it is presented.

My doubt is rooted in the fact that this particular scene is written from Louie´s perspective and even though Henny sees something, she doesn´t really see much. So, how certain is she when she drinks the tea?

A footnote on Malouf. On the spur of the moment, this morning I picked up A Spirit of Play, his Boyer lectures from 1998, about what makes Australia Australia. I started reading it a few weeks ago (actually my second read--I first read it soon after I bought it, and thought it wonderful then) but put it down and didn't get back to it till this morning.

Well, I still think it's wonderful. I don't want to quote it endlessly, although the book is worth quoting, but for example, on whether we should try to stand alone or emphasise our own identity:

But the belief that we must make a choice is an illusion, and so, I'd suggest, if we are to be whole, is the possibility of choosing. It is our complex fate to be children of two worlds, to have two sources of being, two sides to our head. The desire for something simpler is a temptation to be less than we are.

Our answer on every occasion when we are offered the false choice between this and that, should be, "Thank you, I'll take both".

I think a good deal of what Malouf has to say could be applied to other societies that originated as colonies.

And another footnote on Neville Shute: I was cataloguing over the Christmas holidays and I found that I still have Slide Rule.

(Edited to fix blockquote.)

>24 haydninvienna: I think this is why Australians often try so hard to be Australian. When overseas, Aussies seem to love being noticed as being Aussie, and try hard to be even more Australian than they would be at home.

I was reading a book the other day and as I read this quote pertaining to the Irish, I thought this would fit just as well substituting Australians.

'Where would the Irish be without someone to be Irish at?'

Whether it is a subconscious remnant of being a 'colony' or simply the fact that we are so geographically isolated from most of the world, we certainly seem to foster an inferiority complex to some extent.
Even now you will still see news items that seem to express surprise if an Australian succeeds on the world stage, even though we have shown over time that we can mix it with the big guys and hold our heads high.

I have read Malouf's novels but not his essays - they sound very interesting.

>25 JayneCM: I’m the other way round with Malouf: I have 3 of his essay collections but have not read any of his fiction or poetry. Perhaps it’s time to change that. I kind of hope that he might get a Nobel.

Incidentally, when I’m in large bookshops in other English-speaking countries, I usually go looking for Malouf and Thomas Keneally, and usually find one or two.

I've finished. I'm not sure what to make of it. I disliked Sam and Henny, probably the former more, as I found the latter more practical and understandable, although somewhat at the end of her tether.

My review: At first I thought this was going to annoy me bvery much - and, in places, it did. Sam, the father of the family, is very annoying. He loves his children, he thinks he is great with them, but, in reality, he is self centred, foolish and stifles them. He is the child who has never grown up and so has never learnt to cope with the adult world, and so never shoulders his parental responsibilities. This is reflected in the several conversations he has with Louie, the oldest child, on the cusp of womanhood, he contirnues to call her by her childhood nickname, to belittle her and to make feel worthless in comparison to him. Every conversation they have seems to come round to Sam and what he needs, it is never about meeting Louie's needs. His behaviour is clearly designed to show how much he is in tune with children, but it doesn;t work. The diminutives for the children work to some extent, but they ought to change as they grow older, and these don't. The private language that each family develops itself, immortalising mispronunciations and so on, again OK, that happens in any family, it's the way that the family language that only Sam uses is a mock baby talk that I found grating, it infantalises the children, probably as Sam is unable to deal with them as individuals that have their own needs and wishes - he sees them as an adjunct to him.

Sam's wife if Henny and she is, in some ways, his opposite. Not just dark to his blond, she has an opposite personality, very much more earthbound, practical, more despondant than optomistic. She, however, is the one that gets the family into money troubles and can't get oiut of them, partly as Sam just declines to be involved in any serious conversation about their issues.

It is the children that I felt for the most. The oldest two are the most finely drawn, Louie (Louise) and Ernest. They are of different character and temprament Louie looks destined for the stage or literature, Ernest to be an accountant or financial whizz of some description. Both are subdued by their father and torn between the behaviour of the two parents. Not that Henny is entirely innocent either. The scene when Ernest finfs his money box has been emptied is a dreadful betrayal.

I can;t say I enjoyed this, the two main characters are far to unpleasant for that to be entirely true. However, it was well written. I felt it got into its stride more at ~ page 200, after Sam had returned from his voyage. The final chapters are a rollercoaster of emotion, although you do finsih feeling that at least Louie will be OK.

I had the same experience as a couple of you where the book improved (or I gave into it?) after Sam returned from his overseas travel.

And, yes, that scene where Ernest finds his empty bank was heartbreaking.