|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
Frequently Bought Together
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
by Kathryn Harrison
|
by Sharon Butala
|
by John Dean
|
The Prom Night Murders: A Devoted American Family, their Troubled Son, and a Ghastly Crime by Carlton Smith |
by John Leake
|
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
In the early morning of April 27, 1984, outside Medford, Ore., 18-year-old Billy Gilley bludgeoned his parents, Bill and Linda, and his 11-year-old sister, Becky, to death. He believed his act would allow him and his 16-year-old sister, Jody, to free themselves from an abusive home. Comprising extensive interviews with both Jody, a Georgetown graduate and victims' rights advocate, and Billy, serving three consecutive life sentences in Oregon, Harrison recounts the trial, where Jody was the prosecution's star witness, and attempts to understand the Gilleys' troubled family history. Despite differing accounts from the now estranged siblings on the severity of their parents' abuse, it's clear that both parents routinely engaged in verbal and physical cruelty. Billy claimed his murder of Becky was unintentional, but it sealed his fate. Novelist and memoirist Harrison (The Kiss) attends admirably to detail, and her dissection of the effects of violence on both perpetrators and victims is thorough. But by bookending the account with musings on her incestuous relationship with her own father—already addressed in both her fiction and nonfiction—Harrison dilutes the power of the Gilleys' story. (June 17)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
“[Harrison’s] telling brings moral clarity to the dark fate of a family: the daylight gaze of narrative itself as a form of empathy.”—New York Times Book Review
“A tale at once gothic and Greek, Freudian and Shakespearean, taboo and tragic.”—Washington Post Book World
“Magnificent . . . a darkly poignant study of survival.”—USA Today
“Masterful . . . a fascinating and comprehensive examination of the before and after of a brutal triple murder, of the cyclical nature of violence and of the tragic ineffectiveness of our social support systems.”—Los Angeles Times
“Lucid, psychologically probing and disturbing…[While they Slept is] a morally nuanced story, and a culmination of Harrison’s favored themes: sex, family and power.”—Time Out New York
“You can count on Harrison for white-water prose and ferocious candor…Harrison’s intense and resonant inquiry affirms the cathartic power of the story, and reflects on the miraculous cycle of loss and death.”—Booklist
From the Paperback edition.
“A tale at once gothic and Greek, Freudian and Shakespearean, taboo and tragic.”—Washington Post Book World
“Magnificent . . . a darkly poignant study of survival.”—USA Today
“Masterful . . . a fascinating and comprehensive examination of the before and after of a brutal triple murder, of the cyclical nature of violence and of the tragic ineffectiveness of our social support systems.”—Los Angeles Times
“Lucid, psychologically probing and disturbing…[While they Slept is] a morally nuanced story, and a culmination of Harrison’s favored themes: sex, family and power.”—Time Out New York
“You can count on Harrison for white-water prose and ferocious candor…Harrison’s intense and resonant inquiry affirms the cathartic power of the story, and reflects on the miraculous cycle of loss and death.”—Booklist
From the Paperback edition.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
What do customers ultimately buy after viewing this item?
 |
48% buy Kiss, The CDN$ 13.13 |
 |
33% buy the item featured on this page: While They Slept: An Inquiry into the Murder of a FamilyCDN$ 17.64 |
 |
19% buy The Girl In Saskatoon CDN$ 17.61 |
Customer Reviews
|
There are no customer reviews yet.
|
|||
|
Video reviews
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
Your Recent History
(What's this?)|
After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. |
