NOTES ON THE HAUTER EXPERIMENT

by Bernice Grohskopf ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 10, 1975

The opening is a social science fiction staple, with the teenage heroine wondering where she is, in a place readers will immediately recognize as a behaviorist heaven. . . where the televised lessons are all interesting, blinking colored lights tell you where to go next, everything from laundry to test correction is mysteriously accomplished offstage, and most of the kids consider themselves better off than at home. What bothers Evvy is that there's no way out--but this institution has none of the chill, for example, of Sleater's House of Stairs (KR, 1974), for not only are Evvy's unseen jailors more benign, but in addition she tells her story in that (doubly) familiar, pseudo-ingenous first person manner, complete with random, unmemorable asides on the unimportance of spelling, Uncle Norman's theories of education, and the annoying habits of her snobbish best friend back home. But Grohskopf is no behaviorist, and readers who stick with this are rewarded at the end with neither a philosophic point nor a revelation of the way in and out of the place. Instead, after Evvy and another girl escape through a loose tile in the cafeteria floor to a basement with an exterior door, she reveals that the whole adventure is a story she's made up. Which effectively turns an overexploited idea into an experiment in nothing.

Pub Date: Sept. 10, 1975

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: 160

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1975

Categories: FICTION