{"product_id":"9781453265253","title":"The Man Who Loved Children: A Novel","description":"\u003cb\u003e“This crazy, gorgeous family novel” written at the end of the Great Depression “is one of the great literary achievements of the twentieth century” (Jonathan Franzen, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e First published in 1940, \u003ci\u003eThe Man Who Loved Children\u003c\/i\u003e was rediscovered in 1965 thanks to the poet Randall Jarrell’s eloquent introduction (included in this ebook edition), which compares Christina Stead to Leo Tolstoy. Today, it stands as a masterpiece of dysfunctional family life.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e In a country crippled by the Great Depression, Sam and Henny Pollit have too much—too much contempt for one another, too many children, too much strain under endless obligation. Flush with ego and chilling charisma, Sam torments and manipulates his children in an esoteric world of his own imagining. Henny looks on desperately, all too aware of the madness at the root of her husband’s behavior. And Louie, the damaged, precocious adolescent girl at the center of their clashes, is the “ugly duckling” whose struggle will transfix contemporary readers.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Named one of the best novels of the twentieth century by \u003ci\u003eNewsweek, \u003c\/i\u003eStead’s semiautobiographical work reads like a Depression-era \u003ci\u003eThe Glass Castle\u003c\/i\u003e. In the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e, Jonathan Franzen wrote of this classic, “I carry it in my head the way I carry childhood memories; the scenes are of such precise horror and comedy that I feel I didn’t read the book so much as live it.”\u003cbr\u003e  ","brand":"Open Road Media","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47140730700016,"sku":"9781453265253","price":17.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781453265253_p0.jpg?v=1763846388","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781453265253","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}