The Tulip Touch and The Devil Walks
Tread carefully, spooky kids, because today Ren Wednesday and Adam Whybray are discussing one of the most memorably disturbing books of their childhoods' - The Tulip Touch, by Anne Fine, and finding out that as adults... well, it's even darker. We talk about the trend in the '90s for gritty realism in children's books, ambiguous childhood games and prison abolition (yep), and end the episode with some slightly less intense discussion of Anne Fine's later gothic horror children's novel, The Devil Walks. Content warnings: prolonged discussion of child abuse, including csa (which is given an extra warning in the episode before being discussed), and discussion of famous cases of child murder; reference to suicide.