 |
Fiona's True Crime Book Reviews: T by author
|
Sean Tejaratchi (Editor), Katherine Dunn
Death Scenes : A Homicide Detective's Scrapbook
Warning: this sad, powerful, grotesque
collection of black-and-white photos of mostly dead,
often naked, human beings is not for the easily disturbed.
The introductory text by Katherine Dunn (author of
Geek Love) helps give a context to the macabre
scrapbook, and the handwritten captions display irony and
sometimes humor, but this is no antiquarian's sentimental
portrait of the past. This book is about butchery and brutality,
horrible disease and mental illness, suicide and murder. And
as Dunn observes, the eye of the beholder is not innocent:
"The old cop, like the old con, tries to trick us into forgiveness
and complicity. By witnessing he has participated, by
understanding he is culpable. And his real purpose is to
disguise the truth--that he started out terrified and ended up
liking it, fascinated, an aficionado."
INFO
|
|
|
Melanie Thernstrom
The Dead Girl
This stirring elegy for the author's murdered
best friend has been praised by such writers as Harold
Brodkey, Helen Vendler, and Harold Bloom--writers whom
one doesn't usually associate with the true crime genre. Indeed,
this is not a typical true crime book. The focus is more on the
character of the murdered Asian-American college student,
Bibi Lee, on her relationship with Melanie Thernstrom, and
on Melanie's intensely self-observing response to the tragedy,
than on the crime itself. The style is that of stitched-together
journal excerpts, remembrances, anecdotes, poems, and letters,
which add up to such an abundance of details and impressions that
some may find it overwritten, or at least overly long. Those
who choose to surrender, though, to the unfolding process of
the author's grief, will find much to admire and learn from
here--not only about the impact of a violent death, but about
the nature of female friendship.
INFO
|
|
|
Melanie Thernstrom
Halfway Heaven: Diary of a Harvard Murder
Harvard prides itself on being a melting pot: the student body is 19% Asian, 7% foreigners, and more than one-third from minorities. So when a junior from Ethiopia, Sinedu Tadesse, stabbed her roommate 45 times and then hung herself, the university came under immediate scrutiny from the press. Melanie Thernstrom approaches this tragedy with the sensitivity of someone who cares about Harvard, as an alumna and daughter of a professor, and she engages the reader with an unassuming, personal style. In the end, Halfway Heaven presents a disturbing picture of how a small prestigious community can neglect its mentally ill members. As quotations from Sinedu's diaries reflect all too clearly, what it takes to do well in school does not necessarily build a healthy psyche: "When I am with one person, I shake with nervousness fearing that we will run out of things to say and she or he will be bored. For math I had a teacher; for painting I had a teacher; for social life I had no one."
INFO
|
|
|
[All reviews copyright © Amazon.com, Inc. 1997-8]
|
|
|
|