Happy Like Murderers

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One of the saddest and most moving murder cases is that of Keith Bennett. Known to be one of the victims of the Moors Murderers, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, the pair never shared the location of his body. They murdered five children in total, three found on Saddleworth Moor in shallow graves and the other in their home. Keith’s body has still not been recovered, and in Staff’s book The Lost Boy, he puts forward a case for where the body might be. Terribly sad but powerfully compelling, this is another book true crime lovers will need in their collection. However it cannot be said to be the only book about the West you need to read. The key problem is that the actual investigation, arrest and trial are only very briefly examined in the final chapter. And although Burn has avoided speculation, and rightly so in the main, there are some issues where I felt some commentary was necessary. For example, the question of how many more murders, other than the twelve that went to trial, were committed really needed to be mentioned more fully. Similarly the issue of whether or not Rose was party to the murders also warranted remarking on. Having watched the recent drama Appropriate Adult I saw a review for this book. I grew up in Gloucester and had read previous books about Fred and Rose but none of them got under my skin in quite the way this one did. The style that Gordon Burn uses in this book is not conventional but rather mirrors the rambling style of Fred West's speech, moving from the ordinary to the extraordinary in a moment. Parts of the dialogue are repeated through the book giving it emphasis and applying equally to his early life until the end. Por muy próximo al prisionero que esté el torturador, la distancia entre las realidades físicas de ambos es inmensa. El prisionero padece un dolor abromador, mientras que su verdugo no siente ninguno en absoluto..."

Happy Like Murderers by Gordon Burn | Goodreads Happy Like Murderers by Gordon Burn | Goodreads

And so on. The images are so standard, so monotonous. Yet they are images sanctioned, at some level or other, by the community. Not only sanctioned, but offered out, to men in particular, on a commercial basis. For reasons peculiar to industrial society, sex and violence are wedded in the public imagination, not only at the level of pornography, but also in the standard images we feed ourselves, from television thrillers to advertising. That these images are degrading to women is well-established, but they also degrade men. The equation of sex with violence distorts and inhibits the masculine imagination, ruling out any number of erotic and sensual possibilities and reducing the consumer either to passive voyeur or mere instrument, fascinated and shamed by the desire for unobtainable potency. That Fred, a loner, a watcher, a man obsessed with mechanical power, should become addicted to such fantasies may come as no surprise. But what about his wife? There are different types of true crime books. There are the true crime penny-dreadfuls ( Body Dump, Whatever Mother Wants). And there is solid dependable true crime journalism ( The Man with the Candy, Two of a Kind, Columbine). Then there are the personalised accounts by the lawyers involved - they can be great ( Helter Skelter, Defending Gary.)Long, brilliant, horrifying ... Burn researched with great care every detail (my God, the detail) of what went on in the Wests' household over decades.' - Libby Purves, The Times

Lustmord: Fred and Rosemary West · LRB 10 John Burnside · Lustmord: Fred and Rosemary West · LRB 10

Gordon Burn's Happy Like Murderers (Faber & Faber 1998) is a very difficult book. At several points during reading this, the book was put down for several days and it was touch and go whether I'd return to it. But return I did, and eventually finished it. And I can't say I was glad to either - on one hand, it was good to get to the end of an exceedingly tough book but even after you finish it tends to linger in the mind for a good long while.In this controversial and seminal work of reportage, Gordon Burn reveals the strange inner dynamic of Fred and Rosemary West’s relationship. Based on meticulous research, this dark history is told in a powerful, compelling narrative.

Happy Like Murderers | Faber

Here’s a good question for all you lovers of literature – what’s the connection between Fred West and the Booker Prize? Answer: one of the 11 females he killed was Martin Amis’s cousin. Violence was written into the Wests’ concept of sex – and even of affection – from the beginning. Rose’s father, Bill, began forcing himself on her when she was 13; at one point, he was invited into the ménage at Cromwell Street, and began having sex with Rose’s daughters, using them as he wished, with Fred and Rose’s blessing. Their own sexual life had the essential quality of pornography: the more they acted out their fantasies, the more dissatisfied they became. Esta ha sido una lectura complicada para mí pues nunca había leído tantas atrocidades juntas. A veces no había terminado de asimilar un acontecimiento del libro, cuando de pronto aparecía uno peor que el anterior. Sin embargo, ya para las últimas 100 páginas me volví totalmente insensible a todo lo que aparecía en la narración. Comprendí que la maldad es infinita y todo es parte de un gran círculo vicioso, donde nada se acaba o disminuye, solo aumenta. urn:oclc:805034026 Republisher_date 20120414044047 Republisher_operator [email protected] Scandate 20120413024002 Scanner scribe8.shenzhen.archive.org Scanningcenter shenzhen Worldcat (source edition)

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Once Upon a True Crime investigates the real-life murders that inspired some of the acclaimed authors’ most famous novels. Lifers (2016) - Geoffrey Wansell When I first heard about this book, I was unsure of how this style would work. My feeling was that too much narrative and desription might overwhelm the facts of the case and possibly stumble into the tar-pit of unfounded speculation and outright fabrication in creating some scenes. However I can report that Burn has done an excellent job in crafting this work and manages to illustrate the events rather embroider them. Stylistically, Burn uses the repetition and variations of certain key phrases that sketch in atmosphere and psychological themes. Some readers may find these echoes in the text annoying, but I found them to an elegant device which highlight the progression of the West's crimes, illuminate the links between past and present events, and reiterate recurring impressions and opinions.

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Solo me queda decir que he quedado fascinada y aterrada al terminar de leer este libro. A veces la realidad supera la ficción, y los West son para mí la personificación de toda aquella maldad que vive en nosotros, esa oscuridad que mantenemos oculta y a raya, a la espera de una oportunidad, para cometer los actos más crueles. Solo se necesita una chispa, y el círculo vicioso comienza… Anyhow, to the book itself - basically this an account of the lives of Fred and Rose West, the notorious UK serial murder couple. First thing to note, is that it is an account of their lives and not just the crimes they committed. It is closer to biography than most true crime books. Secondly it it written in a style somewhere between a biography and a novel. This isn't to say that this is a fictionalized account of the proceedings, but it is does use a good deal of literary flourishes that are more commonly found in a novel. The book scotched the initial suspicions that surround a writer venturing on to such potentially exploitative territory, and allowed him to move on, reflectively and to good purpose, to studies of Fred and Rosemary West, the Moors murderers (fictionalised in his Whitbread-winning novel Alma Cogan, visualising how the singer's life could have gone had she not died in 1966) and even the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. In all of them, as with his books on snooker stars and the Manchester United footballers Duncan Edwards and George Best, he dealt with previously sensationalised subjects in an unsensational way.Faber & Faber was founded nearly a century ago, in 1929. Read about our long publishing history in a decade-by-decade account.