Buy this book on-line BURN,GORDON**: : Happy Like MurderersLONDON.Faber and Faber Limited,1998. ISBN 0571195466.
UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn.NFINE/NFINE.No owner inscrptn,no price-clip to dw/dj.
Bright,crisp,clean,matt,colour photographic background (by Mike Parsons) with colour image designed by Damien Hirst,art directed by Hugh Allan,
illustrated dw/dj,with white+yellow lettering; with negligible shelf-wear and creasing to edges and corners - no nicks or tears present.Dw/djs' spine/backstrip inevitably but lightly sunned/faded to a greyish colour,as opposed to the rest of the background which is brown (photograph of soil/earth) and not faded; with both head+foot of spine/backstrip minisculely bumped with reciprocal creasing.Top edges slightly aged/tanned,fore-edges also slightly aged/tanned - but to a much lesser degree - so not as affected - contents bright,tight,clean and virtually as new,no dog-ear reading creases to any pages' corners.Bright,crisp,clean,sharp-cornered,black paper-covered bds with bright,crisp,stamped white ink letters to spine/backstrip and immaculate plain white
eps.UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn,3-390pp [paginated] includes 16 chapters,and 2pp acknowledgements to rear,plus [unpaginated] half-title+title pages,and 6pp blanks to rear.
He brought her a lace dress and a fur coat.Symbols of everything everybody was apparently rebelling against.Straight life.It was his present to her.To mark their first date.A kind of nylon lace dress suitable for someone double,even treble her age and the rabbit-fur coat.
Fred's gift to Rose.
On 26 February 1994 the remains of Heather West were discovered in the garden
of the house at 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester where she had lived with her seven brothers and sisters,her mother Rosemary and her father Fred.Over the next
days the remains of eight other women were
found buried and 25 Cromwell Street became
known as the 'House of Horror'.
Fred West hanged himself in prison before
the charges against him of child-rape,
sexual abuse,torture and murder could be heard.On conviction,his wife became known as the most depraved woman on earth.In
'Happy Like Murderers' Gordon Burn reveals
for the first time the strange inner
dynamic of the Wests' relationship throughout their long life together.Was Rosemary West a vicious,sadistic and insatiable bisexual,her husband's full partner in the lust murders of women and young girls? Or was she a physically and psychologically tormented obedience slave,
shaped by him and her own submissive dependence into something compliant and corrupt?
Gordon Burn has been given unprecedented and,in several cases,exclusive acces to the close family of Rosemary West as well as other materials not previously seen which cast new and startling light on her personality and the nature of her relationship with Fred West.Certain to be one of the most talked about books in recent years (then 1998),'Happy Like Murderers' is a compassionate and coruscating response to a case so horrifying that it already has become part
of our folk memory.
The author's most memorable book,about the serial killers Fred and Rosemary West,
with the jacket famously designed by his friend,Damien Hirst.Gruesome and grotesque,but a brilliant study of Fred West and his even more repulsive wife,
Rosemary.Between them they raped,tortured
and murdered a still unknown number of people.It cannot avoid being a dreadful tale because of its subject,but is also this very fine writer's best book.The dramatisation on British television,as
'Appropriate Adult',with Dominic West and Emily Watson,renewed interest in the case.
Gordon Burn examines the contemporary obsession with celebrity in a series of books spanning three decades,including this extraordinary account of Fred and Rosemary West.He also wrote a Whitbread Best First Novel award-winning novel,'Alma
Cogan' - which imagined an alternative life for the British singer Alma Cogan.His
2nd novel was titled 'fullalove' - see rja26567 and rja26577 (both SIGNED,1st edns).
His editor,commenting after Gordon Burn's
early death,hailed Burn's work as "far ahead of the rest of the literary world",
and lamented the loss of "one of the great
literary innovators of these times.
Gordon's subject of choice was often trauma,spectacle and dysfunction.He was drawn to the dark side of celebrity.His literature and impulse always represented to me an attempt to find comfort,meaning and compassion in the most appalling or baffling of events."
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