{"product_id":"2026100008121-secondhand-the-man-who-loved-children","title":"The Man Who Loved Children","description":"\u003cp\u003eEdition: 5th pr.,\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eCondition remarks:\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003eCondition: Fair. Jacket: Worn\/faded - some tears. Page Condition: Yellowed with minor moisture damage on book block. Markings: unmkd. Binding condition: Good. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFew novels have ever captured the suffocating intimacy of family life with the ferocity and brilliance of The Man Who Loved Children. Set in Washington D.C. and later Baltimore, the novel chronicles the disintegrating marriage of Sam Pollit — an insufferably self-righteous idealist who believes himself a great lover of humanity and children — and his embittered wife Henny, through the devastating eyes of their eldest daughter Louisa. The Pollit household becomes a battlefield of manipulation, cruelty, and dark humour, as two irreconcilable personalities wage a war of attrition that slowly destroys everything in its wake.\n\nChristina Stead's masterwork, first published in 1940 and rescued from obscurity by Randall Jarrell's landmark 1965 introduction, stands as one of the most psychologically penetrating portraits of domestic tyranny in the English language. Stead writes with a savage, operatic intensity — her prose dense with invention, her characters rendered in full, monstrous, and achingly human detail. Jarrell famously declared it a work of genius, and the decades since have only deepened that verdict. For those who have yet to meet the Pollits, an unforgettable reckoning awaits.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Secondhand Stock","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49130694967515,"sku":"2026100008121-SECONDHAND","price":35.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0523\/7646\/9701\/files\/46b451ce-ea5e-415b-9ba0-b7ede00551d3.png?v=1786588700","url":"https:\/\/bookgrocer.com\/products\/2026100008121-secondhand-the-man-who-loved-children","provider":"Book Grocer","version":"1.0","type":"link"}