Article: The boy who tried to lose himself in literature. (book review)

Byline: JANE SHILLING

THE CHILD THAT BOOKS BUILT: A Memoir of Childhood and Reading by Francis Spufford (Faber, [pound]12.99)

(Faber, [pound]12.99) JANE SHILLING The boy who tried to lose himself in literature www.thisislondon.co.uk/books

IN a western world that grows child-friendly to the point of imbecility, we are quiveringly alert to the countless ways in which children manifest distress. Whether the symptom takes the form of impertinence, waywardness or violence, the diagnosis is much the same: these behaviours are interpreted as mute forms of eloquence, oblique ways of communicating to adults the fact that some little soul is out of ...

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