So I've finished pretty rough novel tonight, "Let's Go Play at the Adams'" by Mendal W. Johnson.
The one thought that came to Barbara, a twenty year old babysitter, was "They're just kids… It's only a game." when she woken up and found herself bound and gagged. The knots were tight, and were very painful, and the children would not let her go.
And again she tells herself that it is only game. But the fear? That was real and it was deadly.
This books is one of several reissues of out-of-print novels on quirk books under the Paperbacks from Hell series (as this was featured in the non fiction book of the same name, about horror paperbacks from the 70s and 80s, by Grady Hendrix). "Let's Go Play" is a one off, the only novel that Johnson wrote and had published before his death in 1976. The book was published in 74.
"Let's Go Play" is definitely in the vein of psychological horror. But this is psychological horror at it's most extreme and intense. This was truly a rough one to get, but I soldiered on and managed it.There are some things that the kids do to Barbara, things that would be considered inconceivable and impossible for a kid to do, along with some trippy moments as well.
This is not, and here again I'm repeating it, is not a comfortable read. And as the blurb on it says it's a book of lingering horror. And of course it's really depressing, so it might not always be for everyone. Despite this being the only novel that he ever got to publish, Mendal W. Johnson points the floodlight at a place where we would choose not to look. Some would say there is some socio-political meaning, but I don't think so, and as Grady Hendrix pointed out in the introduction neither did Johnson himself. There is only a simple question; do we really know what goes on in a child's mind?
by i-the-muso-1968