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Happy Like Murderers
An account of two people - Fred and Rose West - who lived together, raised (and killed) children, provided sexual services for anyone interested, and pretended to provide social services for single women. Investigated and told by one of the greatest journalists and writers of the last twenty years, this is the most powerful and upsetting true crime book you will ever read.
484 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1998
178 people are currently reading
3466 people want to read
About the author
Gordon Burn
27 books45 followersGordon Burn was an English writer born in Newcastle upon Tyne and the author of four novels and several works of non-fiction.
Burn's novels deal with issues of modern fame and faded celebrity, as well as life through a media lens. His novel Alma Cogan (1991), which imagined the future life of the British singer Alma Cogan had she not died in the 1960s, won the Whitbread Award for Best First Novel. His other novels Fullalove and The North of England Home Service appeared in 1995 and 2003 respectively. His non-fiction deals primarily with sport and true crime. His first book Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son was a study of Peter Sutcliffe, 'the Yorkshire Ripper' and his 1998 book Happy Like Murderers: The Story of Fred and Rosemary West, dealt in similar detail with one of Britain's most notorious serial killers.
Burn's interest in such infamous villains extended to his fiction, with Myra Hindley, one of the 'Moors murderers', featuring prominently in the novel Alma Cogan. His sport-based books are Pocket Money: Inside the World of Snooker (1986) and Best and Edwards: Football, Fame and Oblivion (2006), which deals with the twin stories of Manchester United footballers Duncan Edwards and George Best and the "trajectory of two careers unmoored in wildly different ways."
He also wrote a book with British artist Damien Hirst, On the Way to Work, a collection of interviews from various dates between 1992-2001. He contributed to The Guardian regularly, usually writing about contemporary art.
Burn's novels deal with issues of modern fame and faded celebrity, as well as life through a media lens. His novel Alma Cogan (1991), which imagined the future life of the British singer Alma Cogan had she not died in the 1960s, won the Whitbread Award for Best First Novel. His other novels Fullalove and The North of England Home Service appeared in 1995 and 2003 respectively. His non-fiction deals primarily with sport and true crime. His first book Somebody's Husband, Somebody's Son was a study of Peter Sutcliffe, 'the Yorkshire Ripper' and his 1998 book Happy Like Murderers: The Story of Fred and Rosemary West, dealt in similar detail with one of Britain's most notorious serial killers.
Burn's interest in such infamous villains extended to his fiction, with Myra Hindley, one of the 'Moors murderers', featuring prominently in the novel Alma Cogan. His sport-based books are Pocket Money: Inside the World of Snooker (1986) and Best and Edwards: Football, Fame and Oblivion (2006), which deals with the twin stories of Manchester United footballers Duncan Edwards and George Best and the "trajectory of two careers unmoored in wildly different ways."
He also wrote a book with British artist Damien Hirst, On the Way to Work, a collection of interviews from various dates between 1992-2001. He contributed to The Guardian regularly, usually writing about contemporary art.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 191 reviews
September 26, 2019
Revived review celebrating the reissuing of this book on 3 October.
*******************
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.
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.
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.)
But then there are those true crime books which rise above the mere marshalling of detail and become by authorial alchemy a kind of literature (The Executioner's Song, In Cold Blood). Happy Like Murderers is in that class. I recommend it for anyone looking for something often promised but seldom delivered, a book like no other. You don't have to be a true crime fan to read this one, although it might help, because you have to be plenty tough-minded. This is a very unpleasant read.
It's like a 500 page oral history, like Gordon Burn has given up his author's authority or it's been wrested from him by 500 English working class voices woven together into a seamless demotic fractured multitextured whispering mumbling muttering onrushing torrent. I'll give you an example.
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.
It’s like a river running on and on. When required, Burn lays out half a paragraph of your more usual, more formal sentences, but then he’s back to the babbling bubbling whispering gossipy insinuating voices which are - evidently – mirroring the voices he interviewed for his massive book. It works, it all works, and down into the whirlpool you go.
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.
A brilliant book - I may have said that already - but not, you can see, for everyone.
Context from Wiki :
Fred West committed at least 12 murders between 1967 and 1987 in Gloucestershire, the majority with his second wife, Rosemary West. All the victims were young women. At least eight of these murders involved the Wests' sexual gratification and included rape, bondage, torture and mutilation; the victims' dismembered bodies were typically buried in the cellar or garden of the Wests' Cromwell Street home in Gloucester, which became known as the "House of Horrors". Fred is known to have committed at least two murders on his own, while Rose is known to have murdered Fred's stepdaughter, Charmaine. The couple were apprehended and charged in 1994. .
*******************
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.
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.
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.)
But then there are those true crime books which rise above the mere marshalling of detail and become by authorial alchemy a kind of literature (The Executioner's Song, In Cold Blood). Happy Like Murderers is in that class. I recommend it for anyone looking for something often promised but seldom delivered, a book like no other. You don't have to be a true crime fan to read this one, although it might help, because you have to be plenty tough-minded. This is a very unpleasant read.
It's like a 500 page oral history, like Gordon Burn has given up his author's authority or it's been wrested from him by 500 English working class voices woven together into a seamless demotic fractured multitextured whispering mumbling muttering onrushing torrent. I'll give you an example.
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.
It’s like a river running on and on. When required, Burn lays out half a paragraph of your more usual, more formal sentences, but then he’s back to the babbling bubbling whispering gossipy insinuating voices which are - evidently – mirroring the voices he interviewed for his massive book. It works, it all works, and down into the whirlpool you go.
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.
A brilliant book - I may have said that already - but not, you can see, for everyone.
Context from Wiki :
Fred West committed at least 12 murders between 1967 and 1987 in Gloucestershire, the majority with his second wife, Rosemary West. All the victims were young women. At least eight of these murders involved the Wests' sexual gratification and included rape, bondage, torture and mutilation; the victims' dismembered bodies were typically buried in the cellar or garden of the Wests' Cromwell Street home in Gloucester, which became known as the "House of Horrors". Fred is known to have committed at least two murders on his own, while Rose is known to have murdered Fred's stepdaughter, Charmaine. The couple were apprehended and charged in 1994. .
January 21, 2015
Having read, “Somebody’s Father Somebody’s Son: the Story of the Yorkshire Ripper,” by the same author, this book was recommended to me as another true crime classic. I found the Yorkshire Ripper book very unsettling, but I think that this compelling book is even more disturbing. It tells of how Fred and Rose West – both from incestuous and dysfunctional backgrounds- met, married and killed together…
Author Gordon Burn, now sadly no longer with us, was a great writer and, in this book, he manages to create a real of sense of what both Fred and Rose West were like. The style of writing is almost chatty – a little like Fred West – garrulous, a bragger, persuasive, charming when he wanted to be. By the time Rose, not quite sixteen years old, met Fred, he had already been married, had already fathered children and had already killed. However, rather than being forced into his activities, Rose seemed more than happy to take the lead. Her violence and cruelty towards Fred’s daughter by his first wife, and his step daughter, in the early days of her relationship with Fred are almost unbearable to read. Yet, still, the book gets worse. There are more children born; more cruelty, more vicious and violent attacks, abuse, killings and then the abductions, torture and murders of young women who are buried in the house and garden of Cromwell Street. Many of the young women are abducted from bus stops – indeed, it was at a bus stop that Fred first met Rose – others visit the house and one was even their eldest daughter together. Fred was a patient predator and he could spot vulnerable young girls who needed a roof under which to sleep, a kind word, some attention, a mile away. Many were in care – others chance encounters – but he was always a man with an eye on the possible chance.
The house at Cromwell Street almost becomes a character in this book. Although Fred kills before he reaches it, it becomes almost the expression of his life. It may have looked modest and box like, but for a man of such limited education and means, it meant some kind of success. Visitors remark it was always a building site, but then he seemed to revel in chaos, noise and upheaval. If the children, the lodgers, the constant drugs busts of upstairs lodgers by the police – who seem to have spent an awful lot of time at the house dealing with minor infractions upstairs, while much worse happened unseen – got too much, then Fred fled. Obsessed with his tools, his van, his repairing, mending, working, he could make the house into an extension of his obsessions and desires. Things were important to him – an object became ‘he’, while people were referred to as ‘it’. Peep holes, recording devices, instruments of torture, humiliation, degradation and Rose, like a spider at the centre of the web, with her men and her foul mouth and her violent behaviour…
We follow the couple’s depraved life through the years of their marriage. Fred always working; controlling, watching, peeping, peering. Rose apt to burst into fits of rage, attacking her children and constantly embarrassing them with her behaviour. It is shocking to realise how long they got away with their murderous activities and the violent abuse of their children, A truly horrifying read, but if you are interested in true crime books, then I highly recommend both this and the Yorkshire Ripper book. They are both about notorious serial killers and the books are shocking indeed, but these are brilliantly written.
Author Gordon Burn, now sadly no longer with us, was a great writer and, in this book, he manages to create a real of sense of what both Fred and Rose West were like. The style of writing is almost chatty – a little like Fred West – garrulous, a bragger, persuasive, charming when he wanted to be. By the time Rose, not quite sixteen years old, met Fred, he had already been married, had already fathered children and had already killed. However, rather than being forced into his activities, Rose seemed more than happy to take the lead. Her violence and cruelty towards Fred’s daughter by his first wife, and his step daughter, in the early days of her relationship with Fred are almost unbearable to read. Yet, still, the book gets worse. There are more children born; more cruelty, more vicious and violent attacks, abuse, killings and then the abductions, torture and murders of young women who are buried in the house and garden of Cromwell Street. Many of the young women are abducted from bus stops – indeed, it was at a bus stop that Fred first met Rose – others visit the house and one was even their eldest daughter together. Fred was a patient predator and he could spot vulnerable young girls who needed a roof under which to sleep, a kind word, some attention, a mile away. Many were in care – others chance encounters – but he was always a man with an eye on the possible chance.
The house at Cromwell Street almost becomes a character in this book. Although Fred kills before he reaches it, it becomes almost the expression of his life. It may have looked modest and box like, but for a man of such limited education and means, it meant some kind of success. Visitors remark it was always a building site, but then he seemed to revel in chaos, noise and upheaval. If the children, the lodgers, the constant drugs busts of upstairs lodgers by the police – who seem to have spent an awful lot of time at the house dealing with minor infractions upstairs, while much worse happened unseen – got too much, then Fred fled. Obsessed with his tools, his van, his repairing, mending, working, he could make the house into an extension of his obsessions and desires. Things were important to him – an object became ‘he’, while people were referred to as ‘it’. Peep holes, recording devices, instruments of torture, humiliation, degradation and Rose, like a spider at the centre of the web, with her men and her foul mouth and her violent behaviour…
We follow the couple’s depraved life through the years of their marriage. Fred always working; controlling, watching, peeping, peering. Rose apt to burst into fits of rage, attacking her children and constantly embarrassing them with her behaviour. It is shocking to realise how long they got away with their murderous activities and the violent abuse of their children, A truly horrifying read, but if you are interested in true crime books, then I highly recommend both this and the Yorkshire Ripper book. They are both about notorious serial killers and the books are shocking indeed, but these are brilliantly written.
May 31, 2015
I cannot understand why this book has gotten such high ratings. It goes on repetitively about the sexual perversity of the creep. And then goes on about it some more. And some more. The chronology was difficult to follow because the narrative kept jumping around. Half this book could have been cut without losing anything worthwhile and making it a hell of a lot clearer. Maybe the detail was an attempt to do something like Norman Mailer achieved with The Executioner's Song. If so, it failed miserably.
February 21, 2019
El 20% del libro dedicado a todo el árbol genealógico de la niñera, y bien de detalles. Imaginad el resto. Además, muy enfermizo.
December 9, 2020
Absolutely horrifying in its gory detail but absolutely brilliant for all that. Gordon Burn captures what life was like in the West household from the moment the two protagonists got together ... what a fateful getting together that was. Prior to that there is plenty of background which helps the reader try to understand how this couple came to be what they were.
The author tries to understand and get in the mind of Fred and Rose West and succeeds to a great degree, so much so that it makes for terrifying reading and one cannot imagine what life must have been like for the children and passers through in Cromwell Street. The research to bring the tale to life is incredible
The story could have been fiction, but it isn't, and reading it makes the blood run cold.
Horrible but gripping in its intensity.
The author tries to understand and get in the mind of Fred and Rose West and succeeds to a great degree, so much so that it makes for terrifying reading and one cannot imagine what life must have been like for the children and passers through in Cromwell Street. The research to bring the tale to life is incredible
The story could have been fiction, but it isn't, and reading it makes the blood run cold.
Horrible but gripping in its intensity.
September 21, 2023
Titulo: Felices como asesinos
Autor: Gordon Burn
Motivo de lectura:#Horror52Weeks
Lectura / Relectura: Lectura
Mi edicion: Electronico
Puntuacion: 2/5
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.
No hay dudas sobre la capacidad de investigacion de Gordon Burn, pero al momento de plasmar toda esa investigacion/conocimiento encuentro grandes fallas.
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.
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).
El autor repite una y otra vez la preferencia de Rosemary por hombres de raza negra, lo menciona mas de diez veces..esta clase de informacion realmente no aporta nada, ya que ninguno de esos hombres fueron victimas de los West. La raza de las personas es informacion importante cuando estos son victimas, sirve para armar el perfil criminal de los asesinos seriales para establecer patrones o modus operandi, incluso esa clase de informacion es utilizada por las autoridades cuando hablan con la prensa cuando estan buscando un asesino que aun esta libre a modo de advertir a la sociedad que tipo de personas podrian ser posibles victimas (por ejemplo: rubias, latinos, asiaticos, negros, etc). Podria jurar que para Gordon Burn es shockeante el sexo entre razas diversas..
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.
Otra cosa que no me gusto es que no se da el debido respeto a las victimas para contar su historia. Para Burn lo importante de su libro es el enfoque sexual de los West. Este libro lo senti una perdida de tiempo.
Autor: Gordon Burn
Motivo de lectura:#Horror52Weeks
Lectura / Relectura: Lectura
Mi edicion: Electronico
Puntuacion: 2/5
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.
No hay dudas sobre la capacidad de investigacion de Gordon Burn, pero al momento de plasmar toda esa investigacion/conocimiento encuentro grandes fallas.
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.
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).
El autor repite una y otra vez la preferencia de Rosemary por hombres de raza negra, lo menciona mas de diez veces..esta clase de informacion realmente no aporta nada, ya que ninguno de esos hombres fueron victimas de los West. La raza de las personas es informacion importante cuando estos son victimas, sirve para armar el perfil criminal de los asesinos seriales para establecer patrones o modus operandi, incluso esa clase de informacion es utilizada por las autoridades cuando hablan con la prensa cuando estan buscando un asesino que aun esta libre a modo de advertir a la sociedad que tipo de personas podrian ser posibles victimas (por ejemplo: rubias, latinos, asiaticos, negros, etc). Podria jurar que para Gordon Burn es shockeante el sexo entre razas diversas..
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.
Otra cosa que no me gusto es que no se da el debido respeto a las victimas para contar su historia. Para Burn lo importante de su libro es el enfoque sexual de los West. Este libro lo senti una perdida de tiempo.
December 13, 2022
"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..."
Este libro nos cuenta la historia de Fred y Rose West, seguramente a más de alguno se les harán familiares sus nombres, pues lamentablemente, estamos ante un caso real.
Los West torturaron, secuestraron y asesinaron a una serie de mujeres por un período que ronda los 20 años. En 1994 la policía encontró enterrado en el jardín del matrimonio, el cuerpo de su hija Heather.
Fue un libro difícil de leer por dos razones: la primera y la más evidente es por los hechos que describe, la segunda es por el estilo narrativo, por momentos sentía que no avanzaba nada.
Es un libro que no recomendaría a cualquier lector, solo a los que están realmente interesados en este tipo de casos y tienen algo de experiencia leyendo sobre estos temas. Si van a leer solo por morbo, perderán su tiempo, pues el autor está muy bien documentado, el nivel de detalles que entrega es elevado y podría parecer repetitivo por momentos.
A quienes decidan leerlo les recomiendo que lo hagan con la mente fría, si lo leen y se dejan llevar por lo emocional no lo van a disfrutar. Pero recuerden que, como decía Robert Ressler, hay que habitar la mente del monstruo. Solo así podríamos llegar a comprender los "por qué" de este tipo de casos.
Este libro nos cuenta la historia de Fred y Rose West, seguramente a más de alguno se les harán familiares sus nombres, pues lamentablemente, estamos ante un caso real.
Los West torturaron, secuestraron y asesinaron a una serie de mujeres por un período que ronda los 20 años. En 1994 la policía encontró enterrado en el jardín del matrimonio, el cuerpo de su hija Heather.
Fue un libro difícil de leer por dos razones: la primera y la más evidente es por los hechos que describe, la segunda es por el estilo narrativo, por momentos sentía que no avanzaba nada.
Es un libro que no recomendaría a cualquier lector, solo a los que están realmente interesados en este tipo de casos y tienen algo de experiencia leyendo sobre estos temas. Si van a leer solo por morbo, perderán su tiempo, pues el autor está muy bien documentado, el nivel de detalles que entrega es elevado y podría parecer repetitivo por momentos.
A quienes decidan leerlo les recomiendo que lo hagan con la mente fría, si lo leen y se dejan llevar por lo emocional no lo van a disfrutar. Pero recuerden que, como decía Robert Ressler, hay que habitar la mente del monstruo. Solo así podríamos llegar a comprender los "por qué" de este tipo de casos.
January 3, 2018
Sweet Fucking Jeezus.
I was 15 when bodies started being brought out of 25 Cromwell Street and, like the rest of the country, I equal parts fascinated and horrified at what else was unearthed alongside the remains of the young women that had fallen victim to Fred and Rose West. Thanks to the wall to wall media coverage that accompanied the investigation, I thought I had a fair idea of the depths of depravity that the West’s were capable of. Reading Happy Like Murderers quickly disabused me of that notion.
Both from nightmarish backgrounds, with families who regularly engaged in sex with their children, parents, siblings and animals, it’s small wonder that the West’s grew up to be incredibly fucked up monsters. Who knows what kind of damage they would have individually been capable of had they not met one another. But they did meet. And young women started to die.
Not limiting their abuses to strangers but making sure that the whole household suffered, Fred and Rose were the sorts of parents you wish would abandon their children but instead they kept them under strict control, beating them and using them as sex toys according to their whims, and even offering them up to the many lodgers and visitors to the house, many of whom took up the offer. This is what my mind kept circling back to over and over whilst reading this book: That Fred and Rose were depraved and inhuman I understood. What I couldn’t understand was how anyone else would not be shocked and horrified at being offered an 8 year old, and at the very least have reported them, but instead it seems that my faith in humanity was completely misjudged and that most of the men jumped at the chance rather than reporting them or kicking their teeth in. Over and over again, I was shook at how much I’ve taken for granted that people en masse are mostly decent, when instead it seemed that pretty much everyone in the community in which the West’s lived had either been horrifically abused or were horrific abusers themselves. The terror and degradation which the West’s children endured (as it was they who were the focus of much of the abuse) is incomprehensible (and would probably drive you insane if you could imagine even a tenth of it).
While Happy Like Murderers is filled with terrifying anecdotes from the West’s children as well as the sad details of the lives they took and buried under their house and garden, telling you everything you ever wanted to know about them (and a lot that you would never want to know), it did also employ a couple of stylistic choices that I sometimes struggled with. It had the occasional habit of jumbling the chronology, skipping a few years into the future to talk of something or other and then back again, making me a little confused at times as to when certain things had actually happened, as well as engaging in a lot of repetition for effect. Whilst this did a good job of portraying how mundane the constant violence had become in the West household, it also brought me up short a few times, making me think I’d somehow lost my place in the book. As was later pointed out to me, it also contains at least one error, when Burns portrays the murder of Charmaine West by Fred – a murder that we now know was committed by Rose whilst Fred was incarcerated for another crime. And so, despite being a book that I couldn’t put down (it was read in one sitting) it’s getting a couple of stars knocked off. And I’m off to bathe in bleach.
**Also posted at Cannonball Read 10**
I was 15 when bodies started being brought out of 25 Cromwell Street and, like the rest of the country, I equal parts fascinated and horrified at what else was unearthed alongside the remains of the young women that had fallen victim to Fred and Rose West. Thanks to the wall to wall media coverage that accompanied the investigation, I thought I had a fair idea of the depths of depravity that the West’s were capable of. Reading Happy Like Murderers quickly disabused me of that notion.
Both from nightmarish backgrounds, with families who regularly engaged in sex with their children, parents, siblings and animals, it’s small wonder that the West’s grew up to be incredibly fucked up monsters. Who knows what kind of damage they would have individually been capable of had they not met one another. But they did meet. And young women started to die.
Not limiting their abuses to strangers but making sure that the whole household suffered, Fred and Rose were the sorts of parents you wish would abandon their children but instead they kept them under strict control, beating them and using them as sex toys according to their whims, and even offering them up to the many lodgers and visitors to the house, many of whom took up the offer. This is what my mind kept circling back to over and over whilst reading this book: That Fred and Rose were depraved and inhuman I understood. What I couldn’t understand was how anyone else would not be shocked and horrified at being offered an 8 year old, and at the very least have reported them, but instead it seems that my faith in humanity was completely misjudged and that most of the men jumped at the chance rather than reporting them or kicking their teeth in. Over and over again, I was shook at how much I’ve taken for granted that people en masse are mostly decent, when instead it seemed that pretty much everyone in the community in which the West’s lived had either been horrifically abused or were horrific abusers themselves. The terror and degradation which the West’s children endured (as it was they who were the focus of much of the abuse) is incomprehensible (and would probably drive you insane if you could imagine even a tenth of it).
While Happy Like Murderers is filled with terrifying anecdotes from the West’s children as well as the sad details of the lives they took and buried under their house and garden, telling you everything you ever wanted to know about them (and a lot that you would never want to know), it did also employ a couple of stylistic choices that I sometimes struggled with. It had the occasional habit of jumbling the chronology, skipping a few years into the future to talk of something or other and then back again, making me a little confused at times as to when certain things had actually happened, as well as engaging in a lot of repetition for effect. Whilst this did a good job of portraying how mundane the constant violence had become in the West household, it also brought me up short a few times, making me think I’d somehow lost my place in the book. As was later pointed out to me, it also contains at least one error, when Burns portrays the murder of Charmaine West by Fred – a murder that we now know was committed by Rose whilst Fred was incarcerated for another crime. And so, despite being a book that I couldn’t put down (it was read in one sitting) it’s getting a couple of stars knocked off. And I’m off to bathe in bleach.
**Also posted at Cannonball Read 10**
March 9, 2020
Muy decepcionada con este libro. El tema que trata me fascina y la historia empieza muy bien, pero a medida que avanza la información se va repitiendo una y otra vez (hay frases que se repiten literalmente varias veces). Además está escrito como a trompicones, apenas hay organización cronológica, de manera que es muy difícil seguir los acontecimientos, y no hay ningún tipo de estructuración temática; en definitiva, parece que ni el mismo autor sabe muy bien qué quiere contarnos ni cómo hacerlo, más allá de unos cuantos datos aleatorios.
No lo he abandonado porque de verdad la historia de Fred y Rosemary West me parece de las más fascinantes de la crónica criminal de la historia, y se salva de tener una estrella porque el principio y el final del libro son bastante potentes pero todo lo demás se podría haber resuelto en apenas cien páginas de forma más clara y concisa y no en trescientas con tantos circunloquios.
No lo he abandonado porque de verdad la historia de Fred y Rosemary West me parece de las más fascinantes de la crónica criminal de la historia, y se salva de tener una estrella porque el principio y el final del libro son bastante potentes pero todo lo demás se podría haber resuelto en apenas cien páginas de forma más clara y concisa y no en trescientas con tantos circunloquios.
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April 15, 2021Feeling pretty wrung out after finishing this. Rating is probably a 4.5 but I need to give it some more thought first.
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August 13, 2023
I have put this off for many a year, but felt I needed to read something about the dreadful, obscene Wests because they are so close to home for me. My sister met Fred (and his daughter Heather) when her (my sister's) husband worked for West's brother in law (married to Rose's sister) as a lorry driver. Fred would call in to the haulage firm's office and talk about sex. He said to my sister (about 18/19 at the time) that if she wanted to know about sex she should come to one of his parties, in fact he was having one tonight, why didn't she and Trevor (her husband) come along? Luckily she didn't take him up on the offer - said he was creepy: he squeezed her leg.
I grew up In Tewkesbury where in the first chapter a surviving victim (Caroline) gets picked up from a bus stop by the Gupshill Manor, a pub I know well. She had been visiting her boyfriend Tony Coates who I knew too. All the places mentioned, The Odessa pub, the Full Moon in Cheltenham, the Swallow in Bishop's Cleeve, Stoke Orchard, Pitville Park, the Pump Rooms, the bus stop where Fred met Rose I know well ( we would have got the same bus home from Cheltenham). I went to Gloucester Tech to re-take my A levels and went past Cromwell Street every day at the height of the killing spree going on there (1973/74). Hung around the often mentioned shopping centre, Gloucester Baths etc. etc. Fred's accent was the accent of my dad, my peers, me. His way of giving objects genders (and sometimes personalities) is a local trait - Move him over here, referring to a vehicle - but Fred would revere his tools and DIY work over his victims who became it-s (get it down the hole, referring to a body).
Anyway, this was an ordeal to read, but brilliantly executed, strong sharp writing getting inside the heads of these perpetrators of violence and their poor family and (one or two of the) victims. Babbling on, necessarily repetitive. Unbelievable horror and torture and killing carried out with lust and an amazing nonchalance. So, now I know more than I ever wanted to, a task done. Have to say that Gordon Burn is a fantastic writer.
I grew up In Tewkesbury where in the first chapter a surviving victim (Caroline) gets picked up from a bus stop by the Gupshill Manor, a pub I know well. She had been visiting her boyfriend Tony Coates who I knew too. All the places mentioned, The Odessa pub, the Full Moon in Cheltenham, the Swallow in Bishop's Cleeve, Stoke Orchard, Pitville Park, the Pump Rooms, the bus stop where Fred met Rose I know well ( we would have got the same bus home from Cheltenham). I went to Gloucester Tech to re-take my A levels and went past Cromwell Street every day at the height of the killing spree going on there (1973/74). Hung around the often mentioned shopping centre, Gloucester Baths etc. etc. Fred's accent was the accent of my dad, my peers, me. His way of giving objects genders (and sometimes personalities) is a local trait - Move him over here, referring to a vehicle - but Fred would revere his tools and DIY work over his victims who became it-s (get it down the hole, referring to a body).
Anyway, this was an ordeal to read, but brilliantly executed, strong sharp writing getting inside the heads of these perpetrators of violence and their poor family and (one or two of the) victims. Babbling on, necessarily repetitive. Unbelievable horror and torture and killing carried out with lust and an amazing nonchalance. So, now I know more than I ever wanted to, a task done. Have to say that Gordon Burn is a fantastic writer.
October 27, 2014
As part of the 2014 Eclectic Reader Challenge I was required to read something from the true crime genre and the book I picked was “Happy Like Murderers” by Gordon Burn. This book details the abuse and murders carried out by Rose and Fred West to numerous children and young people across several decades at 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester and various other locations around Gloucestershire.
I vividly remember the ghastly discoveries at Cromwell Street when they occurred and whilst I knew a fair bit about the murders this book has highlighted other elements of the complete story. In particular I was really shocked and horrified to discover what the Wests’ children went through and as a parent myself I really struggled to understand how someone could do the things that they did to their children.
It really is a hard book to read due to the vast amount of unsettling events that are recorded and detailed. It highlights in grim detail how vile humans can be and I found myself having to put the book down at multiple occasions. These self-imposed pauses and the vast amount of information that is packed into the pages meant that this wasn’t a quick read that I could pick up and finish in just a couple of days.
Whilst the book does a good job in detailing a lot of what actually happened, I do feel that the writing itself was rather disappointing. The whole thing feels very disorganised as the narrative constantly jumps backwards and forwards in time. I have read some commentary that this was Burns’ attempt at trying to capture Fred West's circular thought and speech patterns but for personally I just found it irritating. Then there was Burns’ tendency to repeat the same facts multiple times which just increased the irritation factor.
Overall this is without doubt one of the most disturbing books I have ever read and the knowledge that what I was reading about actually happened really enhances the horror of it all. The writing itself did let the book down due to the non-linear narrative and constant repetition of facts but either way Burns has managed to capture the grim truth in a rather vivid way. I really can’t recommend this book for casual readers, if you have an interest in true crime novels then you may want to give it a go but be prepared for some quite sickening moments.
I vividly remember the ghastly discoveries at Cromwell Street when they occurred and whilst I knew a fair bit about the murders this book has highlighted other elements of the complete story. In particular I was really shocked and horrified to discover what the Wests’ children went through and as a parent myself I really struggled to understand how someone could do the things that they did to their children.
It really is a hard book to read due to the vast amount of unsettling events that are recorded and detailed. It highlights in grim detail how vile humans can be and I found myself having to put the book down at multiple occasions. These self-imposed pauses and the vast amount of information that is packed into the pages meant that this wasn’t a quick read that I could pick up and finish in just a couple of days.
Whilst the book does a good job in detailing a lot of what actually happened, I do feel that the writing itself was rather disappointing. The whole thing feels very disorganised as the narrative constantly jumps backwards and forwards in time. I have read some commentary that this was Burns’ attempt at trying to capture Fred West's circular thought and speech patterns but for personally I just found it irritating. Then there was Burns’ tendency to repeat the same facts multiple times which just increased the irritation factor.
Overall this is without doubt one of the most disturbing books I have ever read and the knowledge that what I was reading about actually happened really enhances the horror of it all. The writing itself did let the book down due to the non-linear narrative and constant repetition of facts but either way Burns has managed to capture the grim truth in a rather vivid way. I really can’t recommend this book for casual readers, if you have an interest in true crime novels then you may want to give it a go but be prepared for some quite sickening moments.
August 8, 2018
Fucking hell.
These people. Not just Fred & Rosemary West. The people around them. Their parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, people they knew, worked with, their "lodgers". All of them. Fucking hell.
These people. Not just Fred & Rosemary West. The people around them. Their parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, people they knew, worked with, their "lodgers". All of them. Fucking hell.
October 8, 2015
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.
Gordon Burn has clearly researched his subject well, the book goes back in time to both Fred and Rose's early years, but unlike some other books I have read, he sticks to proven facts, and doesn't use sensational journalism tactics to make his point. The book uses sources from inside and outside the family which builds a picture of what life was like for everyone who entered Cromwell Street. The lodgers had a great time, the children didn't!
For me the scary part about Fred and Rose has always been how they were able to get away with killing girls for so long, with no-one noticing along with abusing any children that were in their care, casually and seemingly without fear. This book goes some way to providing explanations to this not so much in words but by quoting Fred's words often enough it is easy to imagine how the truth's that were buried within some of his rambles were simply dismissed as he was always saying outrageous things. This is an interesting but not an easy read and although no book can provide answers to some of the bigger questions left after Fred's death and Rose's trial, this book is the most believable and therefore the most scary of those I have read on the subject.
Gordon Burn has clearly researched his subject well, the book goes back in time to both Fred and Rose's early years, but unlike some other books I have read, he sticks to proven facts, and doesn't use sensational journalism tactics to make his point. The book uses sources from inside and outside the family which builds a picture of what life was like for everyone who entered Cromwell Street. The lodgers had a great time, the children didn't!
For me the scary part about Fred and Rose has always been how they were able to get away with killing girls for so long, with no-one noticing along with abusing any children that were in their care, casually and seemingly without fear. This book goes some way to providing explanations to this not so much in words but by quoting Fred's words often enough it is easy to imagine how the truth's that were buried within some of his rambles were simply dismissed as he was always saying outrageous things. This is an interesting but not an easy read and although no book can provide answers to some of the bigger questions left after Fred's death and Rose's trial, this book is the most believable and therefore the most scary of those I have read on the subject.
March 14, 2022
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.
It's not just the story of these poor victims that Fred and Rose West brutally murdered, but the whole extent of the vile depravity that went on - the incest and casual abuse, the grubbiness of these lives, the eye-opening existence that these people endured. At times I found it almost impossible to continue. The book is 388 pages and it took me several months to wade through. It's not an experience I could ever do again.
And yet it's quite brilliant. Burn's writing style makes it feel like a novel. There are passages that you have to read twice, just to be sure you fully understood what Burn is describing. It's horrific and sickening, and yet at the same time it's mesmerising. That human beings could behave in such a way is shocking and depressing. I'm glad I finished it. My heart breaks at the lives of the people involved.
It's not just the story of these poor victims that Fred and Rose West brutally murdered, but the whole extent of the vile depravity that went on - the incest and casual abuse, the grubbiness of these lives, the eye-opening existence that these people endured. At times I found it almost impossible to continue. The book is 388 pages and it took me several months to wade through. It's not an experience I could ever do again.
And yet it's quite brilliant. Burn's writing style makes it feel like a novel. There are passages that you have to read twice, just to be sure you fully understood what Burn is describing. It's horrific and sickening, and yet at the same time it's mesmerising. That human beings could behave in such a way is shocking and depressing. I'm glad I finished it. My heart breaks at the lives of the people involved.
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November 4, 2021I’m not sure how to rate this.
It’s very well written and the level of research is deep and very detailed - after all it’s nearly 500 pages and there’s only a few tiny little excerpts of the actual police interrogation, media coverage and events leading up to and including the trial. The rest is the life of Fred and Rose West, their family lives and that of some of their victims. It’s not gratuitous and in no way does it glamorise events or the Wests. It’s just unrelentingly and completely bleak.
The events and background are at times genuinely stomach churning. The level of depravity in what they did - not ‘just’ the murders - is hard to comprehend and hits you very hard. There are things in there you do not want to read. It’s never blown up or put in for shock value, it’s just matter of fact and reflects the utter hideousness of how they lived their lives.
I’m not sure what else to say, I neither regret reading it nor do I ever want to revisit it.
It’s very well written and the level of research is deep and very detailed - after all it’s nearly 500 pages and there’s only a few tiny little excerpts of the actual police interrogation, media coverage and events leading up to and including the trial. The rest is the life of Fred and Rose West, their family lives and that of some of their victims. It’s not gratuitous and in no way does it glamorise events or the Wests. It’s just unrelentingly and completely bleak.
The events and background are at times genuinely stomach churning. The level of depravity in what they did - not ‘just’ the murders - is hard to comprehend and hits you very hard. There are things in there you do not want to read. It’s never blown up or put in for shock value, it’s just matter of fact and reflects the utter hideousness of how they lived their lives.
I’m not sure what else to say, I neither regret reading it nor do I ever want to revisit it.
July 11, 2018
A very hard book to read, but also a remarkable achievement. Written in an elliptical, almost impassive style. Burn lays it all out for us, the West's sordid antecedents, their ghastly passions, the house of horrors they kept building until it was forever demolished. It's like a cracked social history. Bestiality and incest in rural postwar Britain. Drugs and free sex in the 60s and 70s. Motorbike gangs, hippies. An endless supply of runaways. The inward move of the 80s, making good, until economic downturns cut employment. And all the while, 25 Cromwell Street changing, metamorphosising like a reflection of its mad architect and his wife. In the end, there's no doubt that he did it. That she at least knew, at least enabled. But who or what were they? In the face of all the minutiae Burn conveys, I'm forced to conclude: only people.
May 3, 2018
Estás preparado a enfrentar una historia realmente perturbadora??? Pues si te gusta investigar sobre asesinos seriales y más sabiendo que esta historia es real, este libro es para tí.
Debo reconocer que Gordón hizo un gran trabajo de investigación sobre este caso tan sórdido, no necesito ponerle un extra ya que la historia de por si se cuenta sola, te pone en la perspectiva de como fue el origen de esta pareja y de alguna de las victimas.
Tuve que tomar varios respiros cuando se detalla los abusos cometidos a sus hijos.
La maldad existe es palpable, a veces se acerca dulcemente y esta pareja sabía cómo engatuzar y elegir a sus víctimas.
Y ellos los asesinos obviamente terminaban más felices y a la vez con más ganas de seguir siendo más que asesinos.
Debo reconocer que Gordón hizo un gran trabajo de investigación sobre este caso tan sórdido, no necesito ponerle un extra ya que la historia de por si se cuenta sola, te pone en la perspectiva de como fue el origen de esta pareja y de alguna de las victimas.
Tuve que tomar varios respiros cuando se detalla los abusos cometidos a sus hijos.
La maldad existe es palpable, a veces se acerca dulcemente y esta pareja sabía cómo engatuzar y elegir a sus víctimas.
Y ellos los asesinos obviamente terminaban más felices y a la vez con más ganas de seguir siendo más que asesinos.
March 2, 2014
An astonishing, horrible, unforgettable book that I never want to read again. I never even want to think about it again. This is, contrary to what you might think, a very good thing. In a culture that venerates serial killers and often puts the murder of women at the centre of popular entertainment, we need books like this to remind us that killers aren't sexy superintelligent masterminds with fascinating psychos. Reading it changed the way I think, probably forever. I can't imagine what writing it did to Gordon Burn, but reading his fiction - which is excellent, and heartbreaking - will probably give you some idea.
July 30, 2024
a good analysis (beautifully written) not just of fred and rose themselves but of the abuse & violence that runs rife in insular rural communities and is in the end all too rarely brought up to the light - or at least not before something sensationalistically awful happens and the tabloid press comes pouring in. this is a family abolitionist text!
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March 12, 2024holy fuck this was a teeth-grinding experience. gordon burn so deftly communicates the gravity of these people's cruelty with his quick casualness, his refusal to indulge in pitying glances or gratuitous description. information communicated like blind sucker punches to the back of the head, repeated and drilled into, not for shock, but for texture. the architecture of this book resembles the house its characters live in--folding on itself, repaved, regrouted, covered over and dug up again and again. true crime writing rarely is able to pull off this sort of detached truth without becoming a wikipedia article. artful, but truly at what fucking cost... meticulously researched and blueprinted to trap the reader into some sort of hypnotic revulsion. i don't think it's possible to overstate the sadistic nature of the crimes of fred and rosemary west--and smartly burn doesn't even really bother trying. his gaze lingers on the scaffolding of these people's lives, the delusional violence screwing it all together, and the constant construction needed to maintain its structural integrity.
November 30, 2019
I honestly have no idea how to judge this book; this is very far from a fair rating. By the time I was finished-- by the time I was a hundred pages in-- I was pretty much incapable of objective judgement. It's a disgusting, awful book. Essentially it's a litany of rape, physical abuse, random violence, and murder, much of it directed towards children. It's not at all clinically written. There's no sense of remove, no reliance on the perspective of the police. (In fact the investigation takes up only a few pages at the end, and no catharsis.) And it's well-written; Burns doesn't perpetuate any of clunky phrases that pop up in the kind of true crime that gets sold in mass market paperback, that end up providing a little much-needed levity. So many books that I've read end up making easy reads out of other people's pain; they make evil interesting and palatable. There is a way to write about the Wests that would have been less viscerally disgusting and awful, but the more bearable book would have been, I think, much worse.
I mean, all of this really did happen. How else could you write about it? I spent the whole of the time I was reading the book overwhelmed with nauseated pity. (The worst isn't the murders, which are at least summarized fairly quickly, but the memories of the surviving West children.) But I did read it to the end, and I don't understand why. Because it's the best source for learning about Fred and Rose West's crimes, I guess, but what kind of justification is that? True crime is so mainstream now, and you can't go more than a few days without reading some kind of high-minded justification for it, and none of those reasons go into this book; you (or at least I) finish it feeling voyeuristic, and soiled. I don't know what Gordon Burns intended by writing this book, but that was what I got out of it: an intent to question why and how the public can be so fascinated by the Wests, and others like them.
In which case it succeeded magnificently in its objective, and I should give it five stars. But that's not how I rate books; my ratings are based on cobbling together the average of objective quality and my own enjoyment, and I didn't enjoy this book at all. Which of course is also the point.
I mean, all of this really did happen. How else could you write about it? I spent the whole of the time I was reading the book overwhelmed with nauseated pity. (The worst isn't the murders, which are at least summarized fairly quickly, but the memories of the surviving West children.) But I did read it to the end, and I don't understand why. Because it's the best source for learning about Fred and Rose West's crimes, I guess, but what kind of justification is that? True crime is so mainstream now, and you can't go more than a few days without reading some kind of high-minded justification for it, and none of those reasons go into this book; you (or at least I) finish it feeling voyeuristic, and soiled. I don't know what Gordon Burns intended by writing this book, but that was what I got out of it: an intent to question why and how the public can be so fascinated by the Wests, and others like them.
In which case it succeeded magnificently in its objective, and I should give it five stars. But that's not how I rate books; my ratings are based on cobbling together the average of objective quality and my own enjoyment, and I didn't enjoy this book at all. Which of course is also the point.
April 24, 2016
This book is very poorly written, in my opinion. It jumps around a lot, is hard to follow. There are a lot of details about impertinent things. There are also several repetitive paragraphs and sentences. The crime itself and how these people chose to live is bone chilling.
August 3, 2018
No for me. The book read like a very long article in the tabloid press full of sensationalism and sound bites. I think the repetition and jumping timeline would have greatly benefited from a heavy handed editor.
March 16, 2018
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.
Gordon Burn nos relata con lujo de detalle los terribles acontecimientos ocurridos en la casa de Rose y Fred West, donde fueron hallados los cadáveres de varias mujeres, incluyendo el de Heather, la hija mayor de los West. El autor va más allá de la casa, y nos transporta al pasado de estos asesinos en serie, intentando comprender y encontrar el origen de tanta maldad.
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.
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.
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…
¿No me creen? Lean el libro, solo léanlo, y verán.
Gordon Burn nos relata con lujo de detalle los terribles acontecimientos ocurridos en la casa de Rose y Fred West, donde fueron hallados los cadáveres de varias mujeres, incluyendo el de Heather, la hija mayor de los West. El autor va más allá de la casa, y nos transporta al pasado de estos asesinos en serie, intentando comprender y encontrar el origen de tanta maldad.
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.
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.
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…
¿No me creen? Lean el libro, solo léanlo, y verán.
December 1, 2024
Happy Like Murderers is an exhaustive account of the lives of (and crimes committed by) Gloucestershire serial killers Fred and Rosemary West.
It's quite a long book. My edition ran about 460 pages, and much of that length is dedicated to extensive writeups on the backgrounds of Fred, Rose, their children, and most of their victims. There is also a distressing amount of focus placed on their abuse of their own children, their intimate activities, and- bizarrely- Fred's obsession with tools and the never-ending construction on their home at 25 Cromwell Street. I was unsurprised upon the confirmation of a Google search that my mental image of the floorplan of this place was fairly accurate. For a book this excessive, there surprisingly little time spent detailing the infamous murders. This is not a complaint; I just found the restraint here curious given the extravagance of practically every other aspect. And given the fact that Fred West was a prolific fucking liar, there's little objective value in going beyond the forensics. You really probably can't trust his account of the murders, and since Rose invoked "no comment" for virtually every question in every criminal interview, his is the only account we have. Burn talks briefly on the forensic reality of what was dug up from the ground, and that's just about it.
It's safe to say that at least 5% of the length of this book comes from an interesting stylistic decision to incorporate an incredible amount of repetition. Entire paragraphs- and I am improvising here, this is not a direct quote- will go something like
Again, this is my own simulation, but anyone who has read this book will read that and laugh before congratulating me on how accurately I was able to imitate Gordon Burn's form. On the one hand, this manner of writing conveys tone and speech patterns that I'm assuming are regional. When you read the direct quotes from Fred and Rose, the cadence is very similar. It creates a certain impression that can become quite immersive. But I'll be honest. This can get exhausting. It's effective and, if this was intentional on Burn's part, impressive. I haven't read his other work, so I can't comment on whether or not this stylistic choice is unique to Murderers, but regardless, it's not always electrifying to read. You may tire of this facet quickly.
Another issue you may have should you choose to read this book is Burn's decision to tell this story as a disjointed narrative. The events are not precisely linear. The progression of events feels a bit like a scatterplot- you're generally heading in a linear direction from the 50s to the 90s, but in a very jumbled way. If you're paying close attention to locations and read that something happened in the Much Marcle days, or the caravan days, or the Cromwell Street days, then you'll have a general idea of what year(s) it happened, but this requires a lot of focus and effort and will probably frustrate many. It was often difficult to understand why this creative decision was made.
Nevertheless, this is an incredible piece of investigative journalism. When it comes to true crime work, I am less concerned with the horrifying details of a crime and far more interested in the people involved, and I think this work does an excellent job of maintaining that balance of focus. While I would not describe the portrayal of Mr. and Mrs. West as sympathetic, it is human. No one likes to admit that sadistic serial killers are of our own species, but that's reality. They have families, histories, inner lives, eccentricities; it almost seems pointless to construct a work of true crime journalism about two murderers (identified, caught, prosecuted) without this context. The depiction is fascinating, frightening, nauseating, utterly abominable- but incredible in its level of detail. The research required to construct this thing must have taken years.
This is a cut above for true crime. The writing, while deliberately repetitive, is excellent. It's well-researched. I have read few others that accomplish this level of depth, and if you look at my Read shelf on here you'll see that I'm not a newcomer to this genre. Recommend for (patient) genre fans.
It's quite a long book. My edition ran about 460 pages, and much of that length is dedicated to extensive writeups on the backgrounds of Fred, Rose, their children, and most of their victims. There is also a distressing amount of focus placed on their abuse of their own children, their intimate activities, and- bizarrely- Fred's obsession with tools and the never-ending construction on their home at 25 Cromwell Street. I was unsurprised upon the confirmation of a Google search that my mental image of the floorplan of this place was fairly accurate. For a book this excessive, there surprisingly little time spent detailing the infamous murders. This is not a complaint; I just found the restraint here curious given the extravagance of practically every other aspect. And given the fact that Fred West was a prolific fucking liar, there's little objective value in going beyond the forensics. You really probably can't trust his account of the murders, and since Rose invoked "no comment" for virtually every question in every criminal interview, his is the only account we have. Burn talks briefly on the forensic reality of what was dug up from the ground, and that's just about it.
It's safe to say that at least 5% of the length of this book comes from an interesting stylistic decision to incorporate an incredible amount of repetition. Entire paragraphs- and I am improvising here, this is not a direct quote- will go something like
Fred liked tools. He had many tools in his shed. Always building. Hammering, sawing, screwing. Building and building. Laying concrete in the cellar. Mixing bag after bag. Always building. That's what people would say about Fred. He liked his tools. He was always building.
Again, this is my own simulation, but anyone who has read this book will read that and laugh before congratulating me on how accurately I was able to imitate Gordon Burn's form. On the one hand, this manner of writing conveys tone and speech patterns that I'm assuming are regional. When you read the direct quotes from Fred and Rose, the cadence is very similar. It creates a certain impression that can become quite immersive. But I'll be honest. This can get exhausting. It's effective and, if this was intentional on Burn's part, impressive. I haven't read his other work, so I can't comment on whether or not this stylistic choice is unique to Murderers, but regardless, it's not always electrifying to read. You may tire of this facet quickly.
Another issue you may have should you choose to read this book is Burn's decision to tell this story as a disjointed narrative. The events are not precisely linear. The progression of events feels a bit like a scatterplot- you're generally heading in a linear direction from the 50s to the 90s, but in a very jumbled way. If you're paying close attention to locations and read that something happened in the Much Marcle days, or the caravan days, or the Cromwell Street days, then you'll have a general idea of what year(s) it happened, but this requires a lot of focus and effort and will probably frustrate many. It was often difficult to understand why this creative decision was made.
Nevertheless, this is an incredible piece of investigative journalism. When it comes to true crime work, I am less concerned with the horrifying details of a crime and far more interested in the people involved, and I think this work does an excellent job of maintaining that balance of focus. While I would not describe the portrayal of Mr. and Mrs. West as sympathetic, it is human. No one likes to admit that sadistic serial killers are of our own species, but that's reality. They have families, histories, inner lives, eccentricities; it almost seems pointless to construct a work of true crime journalism about two murderers (identified, caught, prosecuted) without this context. The depiction is fascinating, frightening, nauseating, utterly abominable- but incredible in its level of detail. The research required to construct this thing must have taken years.
This is a cut above for true crime. The writing, while deliberately repetitive, is excellent. It's well-researched. I have read few others that accomplish this level of depth, and if you look at my Read shelf on here you'll see that I'm not a newcomer to this genre. Recommend for (patient) genre fans.
September 6, 2016
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.
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.
Es a la vez repulsivo y fascinante lo bien que Burn logra transmitir esos pensamientos.
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.
Para estudiantes de criminología probablemente sea una lectura fascinante.
Para el común de la gente, no lo recomiendo en absoluto. No creo que quieran eso en sus mentes.
Lo acabé por pura disciplina, y no volvería a leerlo, por mas bien escrito que esté.
Mis respetos al autor...
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.
Es a la vez repulsivo y fascinante lo bien que Burn logra transmitir esos pensamientos.
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.
Para estudiantes de criminología probablemente sea una lectura fascinante.
Para el común de la gente, no lo recomiendo en absoluto. No creo que quieran eso en sus mentes.
Lo acabé por pura disciplina, y no volvería a leerlo, por mas bien escrito que esté.
Mis respetos al autor...
November 6, 2008
I read this book in spanish and i must say: the translation is not very good.
The story is OK, with a lot of details that help you understand how these people did what they did and how they did it for such a long time. But the way the author wrote it is very disorganized, he repeats a lot of facts which makes it boring sometimes, my feeling is that he accumulated so much information that he had trouble putting it all together.
The editor didn't to his job.
I guess it could have been easier to make it chronologically, and not the way he did it, which for me had no order at all.
The story is OK, with a lot of details that help you understand how these people did what they did and how they did it for such a long time. But the way the author wrote it is very disorganized, he repeats a lot of facts which makes it boring sometimes, my feeling is that he accumulated so much information that he had trouble putting it all together.
The editor didn't to his job.
I guess it could have been easier to make it chronologically, and not the way he did it, which for me had no order at all.
June 2, 2012
The way we live now, God help us. This was very good, but grim and depressing. How could it not be? I got about halfway through, then had to break off and read something else for work reasons. That was some time ago, and I haven't yet felt robust enough to go back to Burn's book. One of these days... Suspect I will first have to stockpile a lot of chocolate and happy thoughts.
ETA about a year and a half later: finished it. I needed that break though. A brilliant book, but not one I ever want to read again.
ETA about a year and a half later: finished it. I needed that break though. A brilliant book, but not one I ever want to read again.
October 6, 2008
This book is a very, very detailed account of Fred and Rosemary West's life. It makes you feel like a voyeur at times, it's so seedy. You want to stop, but on the other hand you are compelled to read on. I suppose you really want to find what shaped them into 'monsters', what makes them different to you and me. It's a gruelling but rewarding read. I can't imagine how Gordon Burn researched this so thoroughly.
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