Volume 24, Number 3 · March 3, 1977
Getting Away from It All
By Thomas R. Edwards
The Alteration
by Kingsley Amis
Viking, 210 pp., $7.95
The Children of Dynmouth
by William Trevor
Viking, 228 pp., $8.95
A Dream Journey
by James Hanley
Horizon, 368 pp., $8.95
One would not gladly bring children into a world that offered them books like St. Lemuel's Travels, The Wind in the Cloisters, Lord of the Chalices, and the Father Bond thrillers, or treated science fiction as a kind of smut. Though the sentimentalizing of childhood is an Anglo-American vice, we do not warm to the insistence of librarians and school boards that the young shall read wholesomely or not at all; minds, like bodies, seem to grow strong only with some strain and risk. In The Alteration Kingsley Amis considers the plight of a gifted child in a world which includes the children's books named above, and much worse things.
Review, 3100 words
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