The theme [of Kindergarten] is 'Suffer the little children' and 'the massacre of the innocents'. I'm surprised Rushforth hasn't included in his checklist of historical cruelty to children the slaughter by Herod of the firstborn. Everything else, in recent memory, is here….

[Kindergarten] is a deeply sentimental novel, slow and grave, not quite in touch with the real world. The boys' grandmother is an illustrator of children's books, the boys are musical prodigies, their German Christmas is a magical event for the youngest. There is no real horror, no violence, no terror—it is all experienced at second hand…. This distancing is itself like the fantastical remoteness of a fairy tale—the story may be experienced and integrated in the mind of an impressionable child who will take from it whatever reassurance it may have in the child's particular circumstances. But such a story only has interest or...