As If - Softcover

Morrison, Blake

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1862070458 ISBN 13: 9781862070455

Publisher: Granta Books, 1998

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Blake Morrison was born in Skipton, Yorkshire. He is the author of two collections of poetry, Dark Glasses and The Ballad of the Yorkshire Ripper; of a children's book, The Yellow House; of critical studies of the movement and Seamus Heaney; and is co-editor of The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry. His bestselling memoir And when did you last see your father? won the Waterstone's/Esquire/Volvo Award for Non-Fiction, and the J.R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography in 1993. He lives in London.

Edition details

• Publisher: Granta Books
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1862070458
• ISBN 13: 9781862070455
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256