Jo Imog

This remarkable and deeply disturbing novel explores the mysterious and quite horrifying erotic fantasy world of a ten-year-old girl, the narrator of the story. Against her disrupted home life this child reacts with unmitigated hatred and her only form of escape is into a world of sexual fantasies. They are played out in broad daylight; no one takes any notice because she is only a little girl playing games. But what games! She pursues her sadistic play with ants, spiders and other crawling creatures until such a time that men break into her preoccupations and entice her innocent sensuality into adult channels. She reacts to the continuous sexual onslaughts by brothers, playmates and even strangers with a mixture of a child's cunning and almost demonic sense of revenge which leads to the death of two brothers and her pregnant sister, culminating in the lynching of a middle-aged engineer with whom she formed Lolita-type relationship. The key to the evil rooted in this child's soul is to be found in her loveless relationship with her mother whom she deliberately drives into madness. Not unlike the less accomplished The Bad Seed, the author has succeeded uncannily in presenting a study of pure evil, tempered by innocence, and with masterly literary skill has delved into the mind of a small child where erotic fantasies are rampant.… (más)