Book Review: Happy Like Murderers, Cries Unheard
| Published date | 01 September 1999 |
| Author | Annette Ballinger |
| Date | 01 September 1999 |
| DOI | 10.1177/096466399900800309 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
GORDON BURN, Happy Like Murderers. London: Faber and Faber, 1998, 390pp.,
£17.99 (hbk).
GITTA SERENY, Cries Unheard. London: Macmillan, 1998, 393pp., £20.00 (hbk).
Readers unfamiliar with Gordon Burn’s style of writing may initially gain the impres-
sion that Happy Like Murderers is a badly written book. That is, until they become
accustomed to its style which soon becomes gripping and highly effective in achiev-
ing its aim of gradually unveiling how a schoolgirl in white knee-socks – twice raped
by strangers, sexually abused by her father since she was 13 and violently beaten by
him throughout her childhood – came, at the age of 15 to form a partnership with a
28-year-old ‘morally blank’ semi-literate, sexual abuser, torturer and soon-to-be
mass-murderer.
In a voice which one can almost imagine to be Fred West’s, Burn allows the story
of Fred and Rosemary to unravel as they themselves might have told it, had they had
the opportunity. He provides the context of their lives by capturing ‘hillbilly’ culture
(p. 155): the culture of an isolated rural community where ‘girls used to be run out of
the village because of being pregnant’ (p. 115); where a father instructed his son in
how to have sex with a sheep – ‘by putting its rear legs down the front of your own
wellington boots’ (p. 120) – and where after the killing of a pig the children ‘used to
fight over the bladder to make a football’ (p. 117). It was within this culture that Fred
– himself sexually abused, possibly by both his parents (p. 120) – spent his formative
years, and which must therefore bear part of the responsibility for producing a man
who ‘couldn’t remember how many children he had ... [or] his victims’ names’ and
‘was unable to understand the difference between killing a farmyard animal and killing
a human being’ (p. 148).
By the time this book reaches the stage where Fred and Rose were established as a
couple the reader has gained a substantial insight into their characters. Fred: a com-
pulsive liar and thief; an obsessive personality – obsessed by tools and DIY – forever
extending his house; obsessed with female body-parts, particularly the reproductive
organs; obsessed with pornography and sex. There is also his ability to turn his sur-
roundings into a ‘filthy tip’ (p. 142); his lack of personal hygiene; his insistence on
wearing only dirty and old clothes – even his jobs were associated with dirt and waste,
from driving an abattoir lorry to ‘emptying septic tanks’ (p. 142).
Rose the adult woman was ‘an eccentric figure pushing a supermarket trolley down
the back alleys of Gloucester in schoolgirl knee-socks and a matching set of bobble
hat and knitted scarf and mittens’ (p. 271). Together they ‘were completely unaware
of how other people behaved’ and indeed how other people perceived them (p. 271).
They formed a terrifying union in which the grossest obscenities, unpredictable vio-
lence, horrific levels of child abuse and hard-core pornography had become nor-
malised as everyday events. Their failure to grasp that their life-style was unacceptable
to outside observers can be gleaned from incidents such as that of two women who
called at the house in an attempt to locate a third friend. Fred took them on a tour of
the house ‘and led them through to the kitchen ... where his wife was sitting sur-
rounded by a lot of young children. It was tea-time and there was a pornographic
video being shown on the television and the woman and the children were watching
it’ (p. 201). What to outsiders would be considered crude and smutty talk, humiliat-
ing degradation, perverse sexual acts and unimaginable depravation, had become
entirely normalised behaviour within the West household. Indeed sexual abuse and
torture – of their own children as well as of strangers – became a way of cementing
Rose and Fred’s relationship – of feeling united and happy together – hence the title
of the book.
Happy Like Murderers is not comfortable reading. At times the graphic detail is so
416 SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES 8(3)
07 Reviews (jl/d&k) 22/7/99 11:16 am Page 416
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