Happy Like Murderers

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David Robson writes: I was fortunate to be a friend of Gordon's for nearly 40 years, and as a magazine editor commissioned many pieces from him. He always knew what he wanted to say and how he wanted to say it. Not much editing was required, which was just as well – he didn't take kindly to it. He had a phenomenal eye for telling detail, an acute ear and an unusual ability to get to the truth of a situation. From the start he was clear to the point of truculence about what he was and was not interested in, and over the years he showed such constancy of vision and fixity of purpose that his became a strong and unique voice. He was never middle-of-the-road, and spotted many truths about modern life that others missed. Este libro es posiblemente el libro mas perverso que he leído en mi vida. Si existiera la biblioteca prohibida de Harry Potter este libro estaría ahí. Este libro me hizo entender a los censores.

Happy Like Murderers by Gordon Burn | Waterstones

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… 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. And the rest of Ronnie Cooper’s men would go drinking together regularly but Fred never wanted to go. He wouldn’t mix with anybody. Good worker, mind. Brilliant worker. He became known for moving large sheets of metal manually rather than wait for the crane to move them. He was very strong and wouldn’t wait because he was on piecework. Always at work. He’d work all the hours God sends. But he wouldn’t mix. He wouldn’t drink. He never drank. He wouldn’t go to a pub at all and always said he was too busy if they asked. Said he had too much to do. 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?

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Read about the Faber story, find out about our unique partnerships, and learn more about our publishing heritage, awards and present-day activity. See Faber authors in conversation and hear readings from their work at Faber Members events, literary festivals and at book shops across the UK. Faber & Faber was founded nearly a century ago, in 1929. Read about our long publishing history in a decade-by-decade account. For highlights from the latest issue, our archive and the blog, as well as news, events and exclusive promotions. Es agotador el enfasis repetitivo que el autor da al aspecto sexual de la pareja. Habla de la niñez de Rosemary West, salta a hablar de las practicas sexuales de la pareja, habla de la niñez de Fred West, salta a hablar de las practicas sexuales de la pareja, habla del modus operandi para atraer victimas, vuelve a saltar para hablar de las practicas sexuales de la pareja. Pero por sobre todas las cosas el autor se encarga que nos quede claro que el apetito sexual de Rosemary West la hace la ama de casa mas puta del condado (no note el mismo enfasis para con Fred West).

Happy Like Murderers | Faber Happy Like Murderers | Faber

In a lifetime of reading both fiction and non-fiction, especially extensively across the genres of dark crime and horror, Happy Like Murderers by Gordon Burn is easily one of the most unremittingly bleak books I've ever come across. 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. Burns started by writing about the world he knew. He was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, the only child of a mother who worked at Binns, the city's department store, and a father who was a paint-sprayer. He had an outside lavatory, an uncle who kept pigeons and a regular place in the teenage queue for football stars' autographs outside St James's Park.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. Durante casi todo el libro se siente un tono monocorde por parte del autor, como si decir "fui a comprar manzanas" sonara igual a "descuartice el cuerpo arrancandole las rodillas". Basicamete leer a Gordon Burn se asemeja a estar encerrado en un salon de clase donde la manera de explicar por parte del profesor es una enorme nube soporifera. Community strangles. Girls used to be run out of the village because of being pregnant. Their mothers ran them up the Marcle Straight, right out of the village. If a girl was expecting, then she wasn’t wanted in the village. That was another thing that got him with village life: how hypocritical they could be. He had a strong inclination to be private and unobserved. Community throttles. Burn also collaborated with his fellow northerner Damien Hirst (who grew up in Leeds) in an illustrated collection of interviews spanning a decade – On the Way to Work (2001) – after writing the text in 1997 for the artist's I Want to Spend the Rest of My Life Everywhere, With Everyone … Burn's remarkable ability to combine such tasks with all his other work was also shown by the award in 1991 naming him the UK's magazine columnist of the year. It went to his sports column in Esquire. No hay dudas sobre la capacidad de investigacion de Gordon Burn, pero al momento de plasmar toda esa investigacion/conocimiento encuentro grandes fallas.

Gordon Burn | Gordon Burn | The Guardian Gordon Burn | Gordon Burn | The Guardian

Become a Faber Member for free and receive curated book recommendations, special competitions and exclusive discounts. 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. Es un libro que me hizo sentir sucia, monstruosa, y a la vez, decente, pues por mas que pueda tener esas ideas en la cabeza, (y de cierta forma es lo que el quería, enfrentarlo a uno con su monstruo interior) realizarlas me parecería una atrocidad. In 1995 I went down to stay with him and Carol in a cottage they rented for a few weeks in Cornwall. He had just finished writing his second novel, Fullalove, and gave me the typescript to read, a potentially hazardous privilege. What if I didn't like it? I loved it, couldn't put it down, stayed up all night reading. I was relieved, chuffed and proud to have a friend who had done something so damn good. As soon as he got up I told him so, but I'm sure he already knew.Books like this shine lights of horror on aspects of society we generally leave to the most hapless social services. Incest families. Throwaway children. Disappearing teenagers. Perhaps sport represented no more than light relief from the business of serial killers, but it allowed him to play to his considerable strengths. Gordon Burn was a unique, brilliant writer ( Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son, Alma Cogan) and this book takes on the awful, awful story of Fred and Rose West, one of the most ghastly murder cases ever to have happened in England. La estructura del libro no sigue un hilo coherente, salta de temas una y otra vez, revisita temas ya expuestos hasta el hartazgo, sinceramente leer a Gordon Burn es agotador. Hence a reader who makes it to the end of this book, may be have to cast about for another account to get the complete picture. Now I'm was in this boat, and though I felt I should while the facts from Happy Like Murderers are fresh in the mind, to be honest, reading another book on the Wests was not a prospect I relished. However I did end up making a trip to the local library and skimmed through a couple of tomes to answer some of my questions on the case. Of the several I looked at, I would recommned Colin Wilson's The Corpse Garden (True Crime Library/Forum Press 1998) which is a concise but through account of the facts of the case with some interesting psychological analysis thrown in.

Happy Like Murderers by Gordon Burn - Goodreads Editions of Happy Like Murderers by Gordon Burn - Goodreads

Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-alpha-20201231-10-g1236 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9746 Ocr_module_version 0.0.13 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-NS-2000291 Openlibrary_edition Lifers is a fantastic overview of some of the most well-known serial killers. Author Geoffrey Wansell spent over twenty years up close and personal with many notorious names. A chance to get into the psyche of some of these unforgettable criminals, Wansell brings us a fascinating collection of interviews, first-hand accounts and unexpected insights into the minds of the most feared criminals. It’s also a chance to see how behaviours change once they realise that “life means life”. Happy Like Murderers (2019) - Gordon Burn Creo, muy seriamente, que este libro en las manos equivocadas podría crear desgracias, pues a través de la muy detallada narrativa de los horrores de Cromwell Street lo lleva a uno a entender las entrañas del mal, a pensar como lo hicieron aquellos responsables de cosas horrorosas, a tener esas imágenes e ideas en la cabeza. La maldad existe es palpable, a veces se acerca dulcemente y esta pareja sabía cómo engatuzar y elegir a sus víctimas. La maldad está en todos lados, en un rostro amable, en una mano amiga, y tal vez en el lugar menos esperado, tu propia familia.urn:lcp:happylikemurdere00gord:epub:caaf7e5a-013a-4667-85a1-aa3a7e094f3f Foldoutcount 0 Identifier happylikemurdere00gord Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t9g45t076 Isbn 0571195466 Forgotten the title or the author of a book? Our BookSleuth is specially designed for you. Visit BookSleuth urn:oclc:805034026 Republisher_date 20120414044047 Republisher_operator [email protected] Scandate 20120413024002 Scanner scribe8.shenzhen.archive.org Scanningcenter shenzhen Worldcat (source edition) La narrativa es muy buena, se nos brindan fechas, lugares y descripciones necesarias para ponernos en contexto y entender la mentalidad de la época. Tal vez podría quejarme un poco de la mala costumbre del autor de repetir algunas frases cada ciertas páginas, pero la verdad es que esto no desluce en nada su forma de narrar y el tremendo trabajo de investigación que realizó para escribir esta obra. Tengo muchisima experiencia leyendo libros de true crime, no es un genero nuevo para mi, por eso me doy cuenta enseguida si un libro lo considero bien ejecutado o no..este caso es un no.