Book Review: The Boy from the Basement

By Matt Berman

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What Parents Should Know
The author deals delicately with a very dark and serious subject, but some sensitive children may find it too much to deal with, while others will need some parent discussion.

Common Sense Media Review
Child abuse, like slavery and genocide, is one of mankind's great horrors, and therefore hard to turn into literature without going too far. The balance between honoring the reality of the victim's experience without becoming unbearable is delicate, especially when writing for children, but author Susan Shaw gets it right. It's real (except perhaps for some overly fortuitous timing at the end) and moving without being melodramatic or graphic.

Unlike many other novels of this type, the author doesn't shortchange the lasting psychological impact of Charlie's experiences, nor does she demonize the parents: what they did was terrible, but the mother is passive out of terror, and the father is genuinely ill and, in his warped way, doing what he thinks is best. And Charlie's recovery, the main theme of the story, is realistically slow -- the book has to skip over years at the end to get him to a place where he is even beginning to function normally. A powerful and hopeful story.

From the Book:
The staircase creaks again. A couple of words I don't understand rumble to Mother as Father walks through the dining room. A soft answer from her, the scuff of footsteps from the carpet to the kitchen tiles, and Father's at his desk. Right on the other side of the door at the top of the basement steps. An invisible but uncuttable line attached to him pulls on my chest. I crawl up the steps and touch the door. He must know I'm here.

I want to call him. Father! Do you feel me like I feel you? Is it hard for you to work knowing there's only a door between us? You would see me if you opened it. True and real. You could hear me breathe like I hear you -- if you tried. Is it hard not to open the door and say, "Charlie, come on up!"?

It has to be as hard for him as it is for me. So I don't call. I crawl down again -- silently. I have to wait until he says it's time. That's what he told me. I have learned to believe what he says.