I came across the book "The Child In Time" quite by chance. I receive email alerts every time the phrase "Madeleine McCann" appears on a website or news article, (with this particular system, it is mostly mainstream news unfortunately) and a book reviewer made a brief mention of Madeleine in a recent review. My interest captured, I went along to Amazon. Some of the comments and reviews make interesting discussion points.The Child in Time opens with a harrowing event. Stephen Lewis, a successful author of children's books, takes his 3-year-old daughter on a routine Saturday morning trip to the supermarket. While waiting in line, his attention is distracted and his daughter is kidnapped. Just like that. From there, Lewis spirals into bereavement that has effects on his relationship with his wife, his psyche and time itself: "It was a wonder there could be so much movement, so much purpose, all the time. He himself had none."
A few quotes from reviews:
In simple terms A Child in Time is a novel about child abduction, and a parents response to that. At a deeper level the story is hinged upon the two key themes of childhood and time, and is laced with satirical observations of modern society. "In every child there is a hidden adult and in every adult there is a hidden child" is a pivotal observation placed early on in the novel and one which repeatedly returned to. There is Kate, the child that disappears one day in a supermarket and held forever more as a child in her parents minds as they are robbed of her future.
Stephen is presented as father, children's author, member of a government committee on childcare and friend. As in 'Saturday' there are lengthy passages involved with the minutiae of professional life - in this case Whitehall - but perhaps some of the political machinations become more relevant to the reader when viewed as embodiments of the Government stance on childcare.
Do you see the little girl on the cover of the book? Tiny isn't she? Yet you who hide behind desks in the offices of Daily Rags, think it's fine for a child like that to be left alone. Look at her - don't turn your eyes away the same way you turned your hearts away from Madeleine. Take a long, good look.
You condemn those who speak out against the very people who deliberately exposed her to harm. You place yourself and those who put their own needs above those of their children, on a pedestal of untouchable piety. You look down with contempt on those who try to bring you down to reality, to walk among those who see what you chose, or were told, not to see.
Will Madeleine ever again run like the child on the cover? Will she ever again give the same smile? You don't know do you. Neither do I.
Her parents gave us no chance to find out.
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While I was looking for information on the above, I came across something else that may be of interest to readers. An article entitled "The Child In Time" is included in the University of Oxford Annual Review 2003-2004.
"Few topics seem to be as explosive as children: their rights, their plight, their families, their friends, their health and, of course, their welfare and safety. 'We live in the "age of child trouble"', observes Laurence Brockliss, Professor of Early Modern French History. 'Children across the world are either in trouble or are having trouble functioning in the way we have been used to thinking they should. Everything pertaining to the world of childhood, including the codes by which we understand and interact with them, seems to be in the process of being rethought in the law courts, medical schools, social agencies, governmental departments and, especially, the media.'
'Today, more children go to sleep hungry, even in relatively affluent America, than in any decade since the Great War, and in the UK alone 6,500 children are abandoned each year, with several hundred disappearing, never to be found', commented Professor Brockliss. 'Yet, in our modern Western world children are cosseted and protected as never before.'
It was to set in context these perceptions - as well as the real and pressing problems underlying them - that last year Professor Brockliss and George Rousseau, Emeritus Regius Professor of English at Aberdeen University, launched the History of Childhood Workshop within the Faculty of Modern History. 'Modern child-carers are up against a world that does not necessarily share their agendas', explains Professor Rousseau. 'We wanted to get them thinking about the history of childhood as a way of making the delivery of their aims easier and more successful.'
Housed in the new Modern History Research Unit on the Radcliffe Infirmary site, the History of Childhood Workshop casts its net wide. As well as historians and child-care professionals, the workshop draws social scientists, anthropologists and historians of literature, science and medicine. Its external review body includes lawyers, educationalists, paediatricians, a churchman and the head of Scotland Yard's child pornography unit. They have also teamed up with British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) in a study of distortions or otherwise of children in the media.
Whilst other seminars deal with children - representations of them, their literature and art, their psychological and medical profiles - this workshop, which has adopted a multilayered perspective of the historian, is the only one of its kind in the UK. 'By historically explaining key aspects of childhood which worry us today, I hope that much needed light will be thrown on our often hysterical responses', explained Professor Rousseau. "
The full article can be seen here:
