I began reading THE KINGDOM OF CHILDHOOD with high expectations, interested in perusing a dark novel about the crime of teacher/student rape. Judy has been teaching in private school for 20 years. She's in an unhappy marriage and has a daughter in college and a son ready to graduate high school. She embarks upon abuse (I refuse to say "an affair" because minor students cannot consent to have sexual relationships with their teachers) with one of her son's friends. The novel switches between the mid 90s, during the height of the Clinton/Lewinsky scandal and Judy's childhood in Germany during the early 1960s also switching from first to third person POV.The flashack chapters, meant to explain Judy's troubled mind, were simply boring. I quickly found myself skimming those chapters. I didn't dislike Judy and I had a some empathy for her. I enjoyed the way her victim Zach was written. Unfortunately the writing was mediocre, the pace slow, the voice fell flat and the switching of POVs didn't work.To be fair, writing a novel about abuse between a teacher and student would take a particularly gifted novelist, and even an average writer would have had difficulty pulling THE KINGDOM OF CHILDHOOD off. Několik rovin a každou bych nejraději hodnotila zvlášť:- milostný poměr: nejde o žádný detailní popis, vše je vcelku citlivě popsáno; pro mě nezajímavé - i když si myslím, že zrovna tohle mělo být hlavním tahákem knihy (asi jak pro koho) - *- waldorfské školství: mnoho postřehů, které byly pro mne velmi zajímavé; náhled do aktivit komunity stejně jako mnoho odkazů na Steinerovo učení - *** (mohlo toho být víc)- psychologie "osamělé ženy", které děti už odrostly, manžel se věnuje kariéře a ji po smrti nejlepší kamarádky už nenaplňuje ani práce - ** (sice smutné, ale trochu moc katastrof najednou)Tak asi tak :)
What do You think about Kingdom Of Childhood (2011)?
A well written book that kept me enthrall end throughout the entire story.
—demainor
Disturbing premise, but I couldn't put it down. A well-written creepster.
—Murnenp
3.5 really....Again, I need to cool it with the child molester books.
—19283746
