You'd think the title would have been warning enough that this book would be unpleasant, but you'd be wrong. Sometimes I am D-U-M dumb. I wanted to read it because everyone praises it as the first true-crime novel, and the writing style is so fabulous, but I put it down twice and decided twice not to keep reading (and only finished it out of what my dad calls "sheer cussedness"). I guess it's well written, and it's certainly an interesting narrative, but not since Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere have I been this upset by a book (and that one was fiction). Everything about the crime was unspeakably horrible, and my god I could not read this. The description of the bodies and how they were found was upsetting enough -- I skimmed it because it made me want to throw up -- but I started the confession of how it had actually happened and then had to skip ahead because I COULDN'T read it. If it had just been murder, well, okay I guess, but the KNOWING, and the WAITING, and the TERROR of the crime were way too much for me, and I will never, ever touch this book again as long as I live. (Thank god I borrowed it instead of buying it.)
Grade: I don't know. If you happen to be me, F.
originally posted 2007
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