Product Description

This volume seeks to expose the hollowness of condemnation divorced from understanding in relation to the Bulger murder trial. People have almost become desensitized to random murder. It is often explained away by madness, sexual fantasy or rejection. One murder in recent times reduced every person to silence: the abduction and beating to death of a helpless infant by two ten-year-old boys. How and why did two innocent boys kill another? Is childhood innocence a myth? And what punishment could fit such a crime, assuming that children are fit to stand trial for murder? Blake Morrison went to the trial in Preston, and discovered a sad ritual of condemnation with two bewildered children at the centre. He looked for possible explanations in the boys' families, their dreary environment, their fantasies, their exposure to violent films. He evokes the worst feats of parents through candid and raw memories of his relations with his own children, and delves into his own childhood to reveal the worst thing he has ever done, to show how easy it is to go along with cruelty. Blake Morrison is the author of two collections of poetry, "Dark Glasses" and "The Ballad of the Yorkshire Ripper", and is co-editor of "The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry". His memoir, "And When Did You Last See Your Father?" won the Waterstone's/Esquire Award for non-fiction and the J.R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography in 1993.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #62237 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-12
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Customer Reviews

Intelligent, sensitive and beautifully written
"As If" is the author's attempt to understand the "why" of the murder of James Bulger. In an attempt to do this, comparisons are made with his own home life, history and feelings, and while there is no question that his writing is exquisite, too much of the book is given over to describing the author's circumstances. I agree with the reviewer who thought this rather self-indulgent, and I felt a little frustrated since I bought the book to read about the Bulger murder, and not Blake Morrison. I also would have liked more transcripts, drawings, etc.

And yet this seems a small price to pay, since it would then not be the extraordinary book it actually is. One particular account of the author visiting the murder scene left me overwhelmed by some of the most moving and powerful writing I think I have ever read! Morrison's honest treatment of the Bulger murderers is truly commendable, and anyone with so much as a passing interest in the case should read it, so long as they are prepared to forego sensationalism for something altogether more intelligent.

The Courage to ask why - of oneself
To question the 'Why' of the murder of James Bulger is to revisit, an inch at a time with complete honesty. The importance of Blake Morrison's book is his compassion for each person immediately involved without sinking into sentimentality and easy self righteousness. However just as important his unflinching return to his own childhood, his remarkable insight into the unformed minds of children - for our pressuposition that the age of ten is old enough to know 'right from wrong' in any adult sense - and his small but telling details of just how profoundly this killing affected him, listening to the taped evidence day after day.

This is a hard book to take unless you morally place your childhood self above others - in which case it will not be of sufficient interst to merit the demands that morrison places on his readers. I was reminded a lot about my own childhood - though it neither resembled Morrison's or Thompson and Venables.

This is a searingly honest, engrossing book about a terrible and still rare phenomena - the ideal antidote to the screaming pages of the tabloids and to the quick desire to dissociate oneself from a crime which is an indictment of our country's attitude to children, class, poverty and the sheer drudgery suffered by so many children - a burning fuse that, when it reaches its end blasts away our preconceptions and smug assumptions.

a harrowing throught provoking book that kept me awake
I have always believed that the boys that killed James Bulger needed listening to and thats what Blake Morrison does. He takes us on a vist back to his childhood and those of the 'evil' boys and tries and in my opinion suceeds in showing us how wronged the all three boys were, not just Jamie Bulger.

I came away with a sence of shame, at being an adult and for allowing other adults to band together and not see that it was in fact our fault that James got killed, read the book with an open mind, and don't put it down until you have read each word and understood each line.