People wondering about whether to read this seem to be concerned by two things: should fiction be created around such awful crimes? And is reading about such issues a suitable thing to do? Reading the blurb, and many reviews, seemed to be even more off-putting.
There are plenty of works which shamelessly milk the real life suffering of others, so these are genuine concerns. However, this novel makes a superb case for answering yes to the above questions.
Not everyone who has been through awful circumstances has the skill necessary to communicate what they need to say. We are lucky to have such writers as Primo Levi, but, on the whole, a lack of ability to write lucidly and produce a coherent structure tends to obscure, rather than illuminate experiences and lessons to be learned. The author in this case seems to have combined elements of the Kampusch and Fritzl cases. A thorough detailing of the crimes would be unbearable and voyeuristic - the device of the narrator being a 5 year old child means that we can imagine the horrors without having to read about them in some sort of sadistic crime genre setting. This device also throws up some interesting ideas - in a limited environment a table becomes Table: the only table in the non-tv world. The child's voice seems entirely authentic - in non-fiction we would never get the chance to see how such events affect one so young.
The most horrific part of the novel for me was the television interview, where a smug interviewer tries to impose her own values on experiences she cannot begin to imagine, reflecting so many attempts of the media to judge, impose dubious value judgments and package things into convenient labels and boxes, rather than genuinely discover the complexities and shades of grey that real people experience.
My final impressions, and this answers my second question about the value of writing about such crimes, were of a wonderful mother doing the utmost to bring up and protect her child - she succeeds and, in this sense at least, almost makes the crimes insignificant, compared to her triumphant imagination, invention and love.
There are plenty of works which shamelessly milk the real life suffering of others, so these are genuine concerns. However, this novel makes a superb case for answering yes to the above questions.
Not everyone who has been through awful circumstances has the skill necessary to communicate what they need to say. We are lucky to have such writers as Primo Levi, but, on the whole, a lack of ability to write lucidly and produce a coherent structure tends to obscure, rather than illuminate experiences and lessons to be learned. The author in this case seems to have combined elements of the Kampusch and Fritzl cases. A thorough detailing of the crimes would be unbearable and voyeuristic - the device of the narrator being a 5 year old child means that we can imagine the horrors without having to read about them in some sort of sadistic crime genre setting. This device also throws up some interesting ideas - in a limited environment a table becomes Table: the only table in the non-tv world. The child's voice seems entirely authentic - in non-fiction we would never get the chance to see how such events affect one so young.
The most horrific part of the novel for me was the television interview, where a smug interviewer tries to impose her own values on experiences she cannot begin to imagine, reflecting so many attempts of the media to judge, impose dubious value judgments and package things into convenient labels and boxes, rather than genuinely discover the complexities and shades of grey that real people experience.
My final impressions, and this answers my second question about the value of writing about such crimes, were of a wonderful mother doing the utmost to bring up and protect her child - she succeeds and, in this sense at least, almost makes the crimes insignificant, compared to her triumphant imagination, invention and love.
