There's a scene early in The Kingdom of Childhood where Judy, a kindergarten teacher at a Waldorf School in Maryland, is driving in a car with Zach, the high school student on whom she's becoming sexually fixated, and "Mrs. Robinson" comes on the radio. "It's about an older woman who's into younger guys," he says, half-tauntingly, half-seductively, and she refutes him: "It's about a woman who's going crazy. She's trapped in the suburbs and in her crappy marriage and she's losing it." Then, after thinking about it a bit, she offers, "Maybe it's both. Would you blame her?"
It's not really both, though. As the relationship unfolds, it becomes increasingly clear that having sex with a 16-year-old is but the latest in a string of disturbing choices Judy has made, stretching back to childhood amidst a family history of mental illness. Rebecca Coleman deftly portrays Judy's hair-trigger emotional condition, the volatile shifts from accusing Zach of leaving her for a girl his own age to offering him a conciliatory hand job. While Judy's story is told from a first-person perspective, Coleman tackles Zach's confused responses--as his initial enthusiasm gives way to reluctant but exhausted compliance--from the third person. The shifts eventually settle into a comfortable rhythm, and as readers get deeper into Judy's state of mind, they offer a useful reality check.
The sense of isolation and claustrophobia heightens as Judy and Zach's affair begins to smother them both. The real world can't be pushed aside forever, however, and when Judy's precarious fantasy begins to collapse, readers will anxiously anticipate who else she'll take down with her. --Ron Hogan, founder of Beatrice.com