The Man Who Loved Children
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Markings: No markings
Condition remarks: Slightly faded on spine - otherwise fine, vibrant and structural. Take marks in FEP and back binding. Pages white and crisp.
A towering work of literary fiction, The Man Who Loved Children chronicles the slow, suffocating unraveling of the Pollit family through the eyes of young Louisa, a girl caught between two warring parents in 1930s America. Christina Stead constructs a portrait of domestic tyranny with unflinching precision, presenting the charismatic yet monstrous Sam Pollit — a man whose grandiose self-delusion and relentless need for control poisons every corner of family life — alongside his bitter, sharp-tongued wife Henny, whose corrosive despair mirrors his megalomania. The novel's tone is at once darkly comic and deeply harrowing, illustrating how the private language and rituals of a household can become instruments of psychological warfare. Stead's prose is dense, electric, and utterly original, capturing the chaos of a large, impoverished family with a visceral intensity that few novels have matched before or since. Celebrated by critics including Randall Jarrell, who championed its rediscovery, it stands as one of the most powerful and underappreciated masterworks of twentieth-century fiction.
Author: Christina Stead
Format: Hardback
Published: 1979, Angus & Robertson Publishers
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Markings: No markings
Condition remarks: Slightly faded on spine - otherwise fine, vibrant and structural. Take marks in FEP and back binding. Pages white and crisp.
A towering work of literary fiction, The Man Who Loved Children chronicles the slow, suffocating unraveling of the Pollit family through the eyes of young Louisa, a girl caught between two warring parents in 1930s America. Christina Stead constructs a portrait of domestic tyranny with unflinching precision, presenting the charismatic yet monstrous Sam Pollit — a man whose grandiose self-delusion and relentless need for control poisons every corner of family life — alongside his bitter, sharp-tongued wife Henny, whose corrosive despair mirrors his megalomania. The novel's tone is at once darkly comic and deeply harrowing, illustrating how the private language and rituals of a household can become instruments of psychological warfare. Stead's prose is dense, electric, and utterly original, capturing the chaos of a large, impoverished family with a visceral intensity that few novels have matched before or since. Celebrated by critics including Randall Jarrell, who championed its rediscovery, it stands as one of the most powerful and underappreciated masterworks of twentieth-century fiction.