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Synopsis
In 1993 toddler James Bulger was beaten to death by two ten-year-old-boys. In the wake of this brutal crime, came one of the most public and shocking trials in living memory. Written in Morrison's supple, beautiful prose As If is a passionate, first-hand testimony of the Bulger case. It is a book about the nature of children, the meaning of childhood innocence and the state of the world we live in today.
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Review
Blake Morrison attended the 1993 trial of two 10-year-old boys in Liverpool, England, who were accused of killing a 2-year-old; he wrote about the case for the New Yorker. Three years later, the case was still haunting him, so he returned to the subject to examine its impact on a more personal level.
More than anything, Morrison wanted an answer as to why the murder happened. He had started out (naively) believing that this was a question the trial would answer, and was dismayed to find that it was the one issue the court never addressed. Do the boys themselves know why? "I don't think they'll ever know," Morrison writes. "The further they go from it and the more they talk to therapists, the more they will develop a story about what happened. But whether that's a true story is very debatable... There isn't going to be the single answer that we all crave."
And so Morrison turned inward to look for answers, mulling over his own experiences of being a child and being a parent. As If (named from the expression he hears his children using to express skepticism) is an extended personal essay on the nature of childhood, including aggressive and sexual feelings that children have and those that other people have toward children. With its flurry of quotations and ruminations, this book won't be to everyone's taste, but it does illustrate an intriguingly personal approach to understanding a crime. --Fiona Webster
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.
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- PublisherGranta Books
- Publication date2011
- ISBN 10 1847084176
- ISBN 13 9781847084170
- BindingPaperback
- Edition number3
- Number of pages272
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ISBN 10: 1847084176
ISBN 13: 9781847084170
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Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. In 1993 toddler James Bulger was beaten to death by two ten-year-old-boys. In the wake of this brutal crime, came one of the most public and shocking trials in living memory.Written in Morrison's supple, beautiful prose As If is a passionate, first-hand testimony of the Bulger case. It is a book about the nature of children, the meaning of childhood innocence and the state of the world we live in today. Blake Morrison's insightful, celebrated and genre-defining book about the 1993 Bulger murder case. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9781847084170
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