The Girl Next Door: Book Review and Discussion

I just finished reading The Girl Next Door, by Jack Ketchum. This is a widely known novel, infamous for its content, and for a variety of reasons. It often makes lists of "Most Disturbing Books That I Have Ever Read." It is also loosely based on the death of Sylvia Likens, an actual woman who suffered at the hands of an adoptive mother and a number of her adoptive siblings and even the surrounding neighbors. The book has aroused a rather interesting array of responses, so I want to talk about that as much as I want to talk about the book itself.

The Response

From the outset, many people who are critical of this book dismiss it as torture porn. It depicts a wide range of horrific acts of violence inflicted on the innocent victim in the story while she is tied up and defenseless. I disagree with this characterization, or I at least disagree that it is only torture porn; I will get into the details down below. All the same, the book takes you to places physically, even sexually, that are viscerally gut twisting. I don't begrudge any of the critics. It's kind of hard to look around the gore and find the psychological complexity in the novel.

The second critique I heard is more interesting, and it is directed at what I mentioned above: that it's loosely based on the tragedy of Sylvia Likens. I've unironically come across some people who have argued that this book should be banned on the grounds that it is exploiting the death of Likens. The arguments that ensued subsequently brought up true crime comparisons, and also the question of whether the book was even exploiting the tragedy in the first place. What does it even mean to exploit a tragedy? Multiple people ended up reading this book as a result of that argument, myself one of them. Another interesting development was that as I was scrolling through reviews on goodreads, there were a number of people arguing in favor of this book in response to critics. The basis of their argument? That it was loosely based on the torture and murder of Sylvia Likens. Their point was that it wasn't gratuitous because it was more or less true. I read the actual account of Likens, and there were obvious similarities.

I think the topic of true crime is a good place to start, when talking about this. While this book is not the same thing, as it is clear it is its own story, true crime arguably "exploits" the tragedies of actual victims to an even greater extent than this book, or other related books. Not only that, but I remember watching a Merphy Napier video where she criticized The Devil in the White City by Erik Larsson on the grounds that it was supposed to be historical and/or true crime, and she later found out that Larsson had actually fabricated large sections of the book to fill in the gaps, because there wasn't enough material to cover all the ground. While this is an extreme example, the point is that some true crime might actually be guilty of something else entirely, namely filling in the gaps of the story when the facts become sparser. How much interpretation comes into true crime? That is a question worth considering. Significantly, the fact that it has the label "true" on it could very well be misleading. If anything, Ketchum's approach might be the better approach. Compared to Larsson's admittedly extreme case, I would say so.

All this said, some people don’t particularly like true crime, either. At this point, it just comes down to the question of what it means to “exploit a tragedy.” For some people, they emphasize the money made off of the books or podcasts being made. I don’t find these arguments particularly convincing, however. Their argument not only covers true crime, but even history. Should historians lose their profession on the principle that they shouldn’t be profiting off of the tragedies of real people? How far should this go? I find this line about profit to be rather conveniently invoked. Whether you like it or not, we live in an economy that demands we make a paycheck to survive. There are a variety of ways to do that. Even nurses and doctors who help people on a regular basis do so “for profit.” 

Another line that gets trotted out, often in conjunction with the above, is the idea that he made the Sylvia Likens tragedy “entertainment.” Naturally, this is something they find repulsive. The problem with the argument is pretty obvious to me, however. Either the word “entertainment” needs to be scrutinized, or the scope of fiction’s (and non-fiction’s) purpose needs to be scrutinized. I opt for the latter. When I read and write, especially horror, “entertainment” is not usually the first word to come to mind—or the second, for that matter. I prefer fiction that challenges me, both emotionally and intellectually, and I wouldn’t necessarily call this a description of “entertainment.” There is a bit of a semantic problem to grapple with, but I also think it covers up a deeper and more meaningful dispute: what is the purpose of fiction? I think many of the prior people who put forward the “entertainment” argument are less likely to prefer challenging books, particularly on an emotional level; they are also probably more likely to go for cozy fiction, instead of horror—or at least the milder horror.

If anything, I think the book has positive value because it has the potential to bring attention to the real world event, which prevents it from being forgotten. Would we be talking about Sylvia Likens today without this book?

All things considered, I’m not convinced by the arguments. On top of that, I found that the book was actually very well handled.

Theme

The theme of this book is essentially what carried it. Barring that, it is essentially torture porn with no purpose. To be fair, all horror would be, most likely. And all fiction would be purposeless without a theme, so this is stating the obvious. But this is still worth emphasizing, if only because of the book's reputation.

At the center of this book is the question of what human beings are capable of, especially what children are capable of. It looks at the relationship between adults and children and morality—and what happens when those relationships break down. It also touches upon male sexuality and how it can be twisted at such young ages. There was a risk of titillation and outright sexualization that could have arisen from the events in this novel, and Ketchum manages to get out ahead of these issues by looking hard and fast at the risk within the novel itself. He does not flinch, and it contributes to the horror.

Something that people often take for granted is that adults, particularly parents, are supposed to be the moral guidance for the children around them. If you are familiar with what happened to Likens, then you can imagine how this story transgresses this boundary. Ketchum expertly identifies the sacredness of this boundary and how it was distorted, and he uses the character of Ruth to do it. Ruth, from the outset, is a parent who does not behave like most parents. She lets the boys in the neighborhood break norms, and they all think she is cool: they can drink beer even though the narrator is twelve at the start, for example. There is also a norm of secrecy there. And . . . she is an adult. The story is able to escalate from there.

Ketchum builds off of the true foundations of this story by implementing another element that cannot be felt by reading about the story of Likens. This is the inclusion of David, who is the protagonist of the story, and the neighbor of Ruth. He is also a boy, which is relevant to my point. I've heard some people say that because of the nature of the content, Ketchum could not bear to write from the perspective of Meg, who is the victim, and so he created David to create some psychic distance. This may be so, but he also introduces another factor that is perhaps more disturbing in its own psychological way. This was David’s blooming male sexuality. David is twelve-years-old, and Ketchum leans hard into the idea of curiosity and lack of self-control in the face of libido. There are multiple pivotal points, early in the novel, where David makes important decisions, and these could have been for noble reasons. Instead, libido is the main driver. Part of the horror is not just the gore, but the constant reminder that human beings are animals at the end of the day. Our protagonist is not reprehensible to the core, but he does not simply do the right thing, just because. Children rely on adults for moral guidance, and the reader is continually reminded that the adults are disconnected. All the children have is the deteriorating Ruth, and they are expecting her to serve the same role. We are left to ask: from where will this desire to do right come?

Another thing that I want to talk about is his short commentary at the end of the book. He says he has always considered people like Ted Bundy—those who could walk among us but also commit the most unspeakable atrocities—to be worse than the monsters of the usual horror stories. This was part of the motivation to write this story. This really appealed to me, because I have always expressed the same sentiments. The worst (read: best) part of any King novel was always when the people did awful things to one another. And you can see it in my own fiction.

Perspective

Ketchum uses perspective in a number of ways. The first was in the way I discussed above. Another element was the fact that this was written in the first person retrospective. We learn on the first page that David has had two failed marriages, which stands out right away, and this is information delivered almost off-handedly. You wonder how he could end up like this, and you never receive a direct answer. You don't need a direct answer. The novel itself ends up being the answer, because, after experiencing the things that he has at the age of twelve, how could he possibly grow up normal? These events have had a profound impact on his life. It destroyed two marriages, and we can only guess what the future has in store.

Criticisms

I don't have much to say about the rest of the novel. I would be spouting words just for the sake of doing so. Because of that, I will move on to one craft specific criticism that I have.

There is a part of the novel that is introduced quite early on called The Game, and this concept is built upon later in the novel—and it is what becomes the abuse of Meg in the end. In the beginning, simplifying to the extreme, The Game is essentially an extreme form of hazing. It is an incredibly masculine form of play, where boys are able to torment a loser in The Game. However, at one point in the past, a girl is introduced into The Game; this girl is not Meg, but another girl named Denise. We never really learned all the details of what happened, but as you can imagine, the inclusion of a girl into a highly masculine form of play went awry quite sharply. There were sexual connotations to what happened.

I ended up having a problem with this, because The Game was initially a children only concept, which undermined the adult/child relationship theme that was played upon in the novel. The inclusion of The Game made it seem like the boys were already corrupted before Ruth ever got her hands on them.

At the same time, I understand that there is no simple solution here. If you remove The Game, you remove an important stepping stone. It is established in the novel that The Game was a pivotal coping mechanism that David and the other boys latched onto as the abuse of Meg escalated. At the same time, if you keep it, the problem that I laid out above remains.

I still think there are some solutions to be had, though. For one, I think David should have made The Game connection a little later in the story, maybe during the scene where Meg was getting Kool-Aid from the fridge. Another change would be to tone down the implications with Denise and The Game as it originally manifested. Maybe Ketchum should have removed Denise from this part of the story altogether and had Meg be the first time a girl had been introduced. I think that would have made David’s realization during the Kool-Aid scene all the more profound.

Conclusion

This was quite the brutal and confrontational read. It doesn't just challenge your stomach, but also your conception of human nature, which I appreciated. I think I will give this an 8.5/10.

Video: https://youtu.be/y7EAaERg14A