Can anyone give me the low down on The Children's Book!

[Whoamireally]

Please, save me from embarrassment at Book Club on Tuesday. I was meant to read The Children's Book (AS Byatt) but have been engrossed in The Prep by Curtis Sittenfield.

Anyone who's read The Children's Book - please pretty please could you give me a brief walkthrough

The reviews on Amazon seem a bit mixed - did you love it or hate it|?

I doubt you'll be the only one who's not finished it - when we read it for our book group the people who'd managed to plough through every word were in the minority

erm ... can't remember much else tbh (which prob says quite a lot in itself)

hope someone more helpful will be along in a minute :)

So, some rich lefty artistic people have lots of kids, nominally with their spouse, but not really, mess them all up royally, lots of liberal history thrown in, some of the kids die in the 1st world war, some don't. but they are all generally messed up. Some pottery as well.

I can go into more detail if you want.

oh, and I thought it was very very interesting, especially all the historically parts about leftwing history, but I HATED every adult character in it. They all abused their children in various ways while rewriting history/transforming the art world.

There may have been one redeemable adult, I think.

a summary: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Children's_Book

I was enjoying it, then put it down at the end of July when I went on holiday and forgot all about it - so thanks for the reminder. I was about two thirds through (after the girl went to Germany and met her real father) and, yes, virtually all the adults abuse the children in some way whilst being so very clever/talented. For an AS Byatt book, it is more readable than most.

Sorry you haven't had chance to read it. It is very good indeed, so maybe you'll get a chance later on to catch up with it. Read the wiki, I guess. The intricacies of the plot would require a really long review to explain them all.

I loved it - one of my best reads this year.

Oooh thank you so much especially Bella - that really helps :) My fave reads are usually the ones that you either love or hate and this seems to fall right into that category!

Goodness me there about 100,000 characters. LMAO at the bit on Wiki where the author had to keep a spreadsheet to keep track of them all!

The first half was v good, original and I enjoyed it. The second half, I was like I've read it all before- and in some pretty light fiction, eg Penny Vincenzi. I was surprised it hadn't been heavily edited tbh, it felt so unbalanced to me.

The Children's Book is well worth a read, although I can understand getting caught up in Prep, I'm also reading that right now and it is quite compulsive.

Olive Wellwood is based on E Nesbit, author of children's books inc The Railway Children, Five Children and It and lots of others.

How did the bookclub discussion go?

Really? I loved all the of the E Nesbit books as a child!

General opinion at bookclub was mixed - bit like opinions on here. The parents in the group were mostly in the 'didn't like' group, which we thought was probably because of the emotional maltreatment of children, whereas the non-parents came away having actually enjoyed reading it.

Thanks to you guys I nodded sagely in the right places and paraphrased talkingnonsense (thanks ) which impressed some of the yummy mummies because normally I mostly sit there, having delivered my one pre-prepared comment, nursing my wine and soda watching everyone else argue I do love Mumsnet!

elkiedee what do you think of The Prep - I enjoyed it in a morbidly fascinated way, made me feel a bit sick in places to re-live some of the horrid teenage moments I had forgotten I'd lived through, but by the same token it was compulsive reading!

I really enjoyed it. My school years were miserable but in a very different way from Lee's so I didn't have that issue with it, although some of her experiences were quite grim. I did get annoyed with her sometimes though, she's a bit silly, isn't she? But it's realistic for a teenage character to be so silly, who was sensible at 15?