House of Stairs

Great for preteens and adults

I first read this book in junior high. I'm 42 year old now, and the themes of this book stand out, even today. It was one of the few books I read in those days that kept me thinking about it, long after it was completed. I believe that this book was what first led me to study psychology. For young readers, it can be quite disturbing, or quite boring...depending upon how much they "think" about it. If you read this book and want to know more about the psychology behind it, check out the entries in Wikipedia about the Milgram study or the Zimbardo Stanford Prison experiements. Another reviewer mentioned Pavlov conditioning, but I think the studies related to obedience and learned helplessness are equally applicable. I recommend this book for young people over the age of 10. Another good book for folks who like this book is O.T. Nelson's "The Girl Who Owned a City" (ISBN: 0822596709 ).

Easily the finest of Sleator's works, this book is about five 16-year olds who are then subjected to Pavlovian conditioning in order to . . . well I don't want to spoil the book completely. It is set against a background of a futuristic world gone bad though virtually all of the action takes place in the creepy house of stairs with only the five teenagers present. An excellent morality tale that will make people of any age think. I've read it loads of times over the years and still like it. It might not be appropriate for younger kids of high reading ability (or should at least be discussed with them afterward). On the other hand, it is a work to be recommended precisely because it doesn't shy away from tough issues that many adult works grapple with.

I read this book about 20 yrs ago. I can remember checking it out at the library. I can remember being totally engrossed. I can remember the stairs and the food machines. All of the details are gone, but I can remember exactly how it felt to read it. Whenever anyone asks me for a young adult recommendation I think, "I wish I could remember the title of that book. I'm remodeling my home and I did a search for "stairs." There it was. It must have been a great book if I can still feel it 20 yrs later.

"House of Stairs" is about five teenagers who are placed in a surreal environment as part of a bizzare psychological experiment in conditioning. At first, all behave as predicted, and their behaviour is not very pretty. As nearly every reviewer has commented, the situation is something like that in "Lord of the Flies" or Jules Verne's similar but more gentle story, "The Long Vacation." Yet the point of the story is not that all people are innately savage and vicious. Rather, Sleator tells us that humans, even when beset by malicious companions and placed in a weird situation for no reason, can follow their deepest beliefs, and they can do this even when doing so is detrimental to them in every possible way that they can see. The book focuses on human stubborness and unaccountability, which are two of our irritating traits as well as our redeeming graces (reminding one of "A Wrinkle in Time"), while at the same time making it clear that those who embrace manipulation and its rewards suffer a nasty fate. Sleator thus affirms the freedom of the human will and rejects determinism, while at the same time making it clear that certain results flow inevitably from certain actions.

Many years ago, when I was a wee lad of ten, I came across this book. At the time it registered as nothing more than a really good book, but later in life, I realized that House of Stairs was the first book that took my pinhole sized window of decent human normalcy and opened the blinds to include all the lovely dark fringes into view. This book, while being strictly a kid's book and friendly to a wide range of young readers, is one of the most sinister lessons of base human nature around. The "experiment" which makes up the story, is a pretty stark look at what happens to society (or 'cliques,' since we are dealing with kids), when the external influences of the familiar world are stripped away, and all that's left is satiating the animal instict of survival. Sort of a post-modern Lord of the Flies. Instead of an island, it's a (see title). There is a definate two-pronged lesson to be learned by reading this book. The first is to witness the change in the children as the experiment wears them down into little more than animals performing for sustenance. The second is the realization that the authority behind their situation is the true evil--subjecting the kids to severe psychological torture for no more cause than scientific whimsy. Teachers, you want your kids to grow up as free, clear thinkers? Stock this and every book Sleator has ever written.