A review by emily1602
Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids by Kenzaburō Ōe

Not bad. I thought at the beginning it was going to be overly-edgy for me. The kids are abused and miserable while the adults are in charge. They were being beaten and having graphic diarrhea in like the first chapter, how much worse was it going to get? But I was thinking that because of the comparisons to 'Lord of the Flies.' From what I remember in high school, things in that book just get worse and worse the longer the kids are left on their own. But here the kids slowly start to do better after the villagers abandon them because of the plague. Even at the happiest moments, they are wringing the necks of birds and gleefully disemboweling them. But they are also having nice moments of friendship and kindness. Then the adult world begins to touch them again, and things go right back to being terrible.