{
  "id": 16984460,
  "title": "John A. Scott’s The Boy Who Loved Dolls is a surreal tale of figurative dismemberments",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/28/john-a-scotts-the-boy-who-loved-dolls-is-a-surreal-tale-of-figurative",
  "topic": "world",
  "section": "World",
  "published": "2026-10-28T23:26:25.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The Conversation AU",
    "slug": "the-conversation-au",
    "url": "https://theconversation.com/john-a-scotts-the-boy-who-loved-dolls-is-a-surreal-tale-of-figurative-dismemberments-291146"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "John A. Scott's latest novel, The Boy Who Loved Dolls, presents itself like a classic Gothic tale: a young woman locked away in a grand mansion, a mysterious older man, traces of a past lover whose disappearance is unsolved, and the anxiety of sharing her fate. The opening chapters feel similar to Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, setting up a mood of paranoia and foreboding.\n\n\" The Boy Who Loved Dolls \" by John A. Scott, an English-Australian poet and novelist, is his 18th book and is influenced by the French avant-garde. It takes inspiration from French surrealism and post-war European cinema, reflecting on the response to the horrors of fascism and war. The protagonist is Jean-Jacques Baille, a reclusive French film director living in Australia, who is reminiscent of Jean-Luc Godard, Agnès Varda, and François Truffaut. He falls in love with a young Australian woman, Anna, whom he casts in all his productions despite her lack of acting experience or ability to speak French.\n\nIn 1984, three years before the main narrative starts, Anna is abducted by masked men from her chauffeured car. Her fate remains a mystery. Baille's career transitions into a state of uncertainty following this event. He retreats to his Australian estate and makes one final cryptic film, Christophe, le Peintre, which deals with the grief over his lost lover. The lover in the film is played by an actor who bears a striking resemblance to Anna.\n\nThe novel starts when film critic Susan Vaughan arrives at Baille's estate for an interview. At 27, she is half his age and immediately shows reverence towards him. Both are deeply introspective and discuss childhood trauma, Nazism, and the shortcomings of French film director Jean Renoir. They create fabricated versions of themselves and are more broken than they appear. Baille introduces Susan to his collection of dolls, which he sees as a manifestation of his inner self. Hitchcock's use of dolls to manipulate actresses is compared to Baille's fascination with them.\n\nThe novel delves into the figurative dismemberments of the human body, which is a motif that Baille seems to be obsessed with. His museum includes doll photographs by Hans Bellmer, whose work reflects the grotesque manipulations and dismemberments of the human body, echoing the brutalities of Nazi rule. When Susan examines Baille's doll hospital, she is unsure whether he is repairing and reconnecting or breaking them apart, just like Bellmer's dolls.\n\nThe novel presents transcripts of Susan's interviews with Baille, conducted over several days. These are intercut with scenes of her exploring the house and studying Baille's rare films in his darkroom. She is particularly interested in Christophe, le Peintre, a film that portrays the aftermath of Anna's disappearance and the implications of art in the face of death. The film ends with the grieving painter amputating his own hand, making figurative dismemberments a central theme. The jump cuts and mismatched edits in the film suggest that the reality it constructs is a violent act. Susan, as a film school graduate, references feminist psychoanalytic theorist Laura Mulvey, who argued that Hollywood cinema fetishizes and dismembers the female body. The camera in Rear Window, for instance, can be seen as a mechanism of symbolic violence, turning women into objects for the male gaze.",
  "summary": "The Boy Who Loved Dolls looks back to French surrealism and post-war European cinema, and the way they responded to the horrors of fascism and war.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}