The Man Who Loved Children

This book has all the themes that I usually avoid: pathological families, unhappy marriages, numerous children; and yet, I'm so happy to have trusted Franzen's recommendation on this one. That Stead's been allowed to fall into obscurity is truly criminal — she's a writer in complete control, who trusts the readers' judgement and respects their intellect. Her prose is sublime; her ear for dialogue in particular is exceptional – she beats all of the writers I know with the exception of maybe Twain.

It's been several weeks since I finished this book and I'm still thinking about it — or more accurately, still absolutely seething over the steaming pile of garbage that was Sam Pollit, the titular ‘man who loved children'. Despite the fact that Stead's characters are very clearly the products of their specific era — the early 20th century — with lives largely determined by the strict moral order of that time, Sam Pollit is an immediately recognisable archetype of an absolute horror of a man. Transplanted to our day and age he'd be posting selfies with tigers and pictures of himself playing ball with little kids in Africa while ruining some poor girl's life and spending someone else's money. He might sound different now and have slightly updated ideas but he's still undeservedly winning at everything. Stead paints him fairly, letting him spout his hair-raising ideas with complete objectivity on her part, which only intensifies the horror of the reader. He's the type of guy your mother would've warned you about, if only she knew how to spot him.

It's insane that we as a society still not only give a total pass to men like Sam Pollit for the kind of immaturity and shortsightedness that is not at all accepted in women, but that we still actively reward them. Sam Pollit is allowed to run Henny's life into complete ruin, and still he emerges from it unscathed, and with no lessons learned. And as hard as it is to sympathise with a woman who repeatedly threatens to murder her own children and who calls them gutter rats, I'm so totally, completely Team Henny. The parts that deal with her intuitive, unspoken truce with Louie are some of the most touching and profound in the entire book — I kept rooting for their sisterhood to prevail.

I'll start by saying that I understand why many contemporary novelists are fans of this novel. The family dynamics in this novel are so life-like, I felt like a fly on the wall who is observing a real dysfunctional family. That being said, the novel suffers from a lack of critical editing. It could easily have been cut to half the length without any loss of resonance or truth. Still, I recommend it to anyone that writes about family dynamics and any fan of novels centering around those dynamics. Just be prepared to work hard to make it through the overly drawn out center of the novel.