The Sleeping Doll by Jeffery Deaverby Jeffery Deaver
Daniel Pell is a contemporary Charles Manson. A petty criminal with a history of antisocial behavior and obsession with controlling other people, he had a group of women living with him in a quasi cult in central California. Eight years ago, he and another man viciously slaughtered a family for no apparent reason, though the three women in his "Family" were absolved of any part in the deaths.
The second and third movements of Luciano Berio's Sinfonia (1970) are emblematic of the 1960s. After a two-minute memorial to Martin Luther King, the third movement evokes the contrast between the exuberant past and the decentered present. Against the backdrop of the Scherzo movement of Mahler's second ("Resurrection") symphony, a continuous rendition which provides the only apparent structure, we hear bits of the 60s— fragments from May 1968, in France, conversations about art and music, references to other events, chatter.
Loners describes a unique group of solitary children who were unable to adapt to the social and educational demands of school life. Wolff discusses the nature and origins of their difficulties and compares them with autism, Asperger's syndrome and schizoid/schizotypal personality disorders. Wolff illustrates her study with case histories of children and adults over a twenty year period, as well as with discusssions of the apparent eccentricities of some exceptional people who catch the public eye. The book shows the necessity of the clinical recognition of the syndrome.
