Customer Reviews

While They Slept: An Inquiry into the Murder of a Family

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

I've read a few of Harrison's books over the years (though not The Kiss, which is about an incestuous relationship with her father)and think she's a fine writer. As she amply shows in her latest non-fiction about the murder of a family by the 19 year old son, who spares one sister, while killing his second sister and his abusive parents.

The book is about how both the brother (locked up in an Oregon prison for life) and his sister, who made a productive life for herself, including a degree from Georgetown College, have lived in the years since the murder.

The ONLY reason I'm giving this book four and not five stars is the way Harrison inserts her own "story" into that of the Gilley siblings. Now, I know WHY she did it, but I would have rather read a straight forward account of the crime and aftermath, rather than have to deal with Harrison's intrusion into the story.

I know that Norman Mailer inserted himself as writer into "Executioner's Song" about Gary Gilmore and, of course, Truman Capote did the same in "In Cold Blood". Maybe Kathryn Harrison's writing isn't quite as good as Mailer or Capote's or maybe the crime she wrote about just isn't as compelling as the ones written about by Mailer and Capote.

In any case, the book is well worth reading. Most readers probably won't be as put off by Harrison's story told in tandem with the Gilleys'.

Kathryn Harrison is an immensely gifted writer. I read one of her earlier novels, Exposure, many years ago, and was enthralled with her perceptions, intuition, and tone. As most of her fans know, she was also the victim of an incestuous relationship with her own father, which she documents in her non-fiction work, The Kiss.

And herein lies the problem with her latest non-fiction work, focusing on the April morning when young Billy Gilley, Jr., murdered his sleeping parents and younger sister, allowing only his cherished sister, Jody, to survive. Jody somehow psychically survives this violent night, and, in fact, becomes Chief of Staff for President Clinton's National Campaign Against Youth Violence, among other things.

Harrison conducts many face-to-face interviews with Jody and Billy, who are estranged. It doesn't take long, though, for the reader to realize that this book is less about their tragedy than Harrison's own. She writes, "For a long time I understand my pursuit of the Gilleys' tragedy as driven my identification with the two older of the family's children: with Jody, in whom I saw an outline of my better self, intelligent and capable...then with Billy, whom I allowed to represent the wounded and murderously angry child that I was..."

Based on her transference to the Gilley tragedy, Harrison goes into deep analysis of Jody and Billy. At times, I almost felt as if I were reading a psychiatrist's transcript. One example: "It seems likely to me that Billy's memory is inspired by his wish for a grandmother who was powerful enough to save him -- a woman with a weapon she was willing to use..." Examples like this abound. Since the author has had massive therapy but is not, in fact, a trained psychiatrist, these passages sometimes seem arrogant.

Moreover, Harrison seems unaware, at times, of how her own tragedy colors her perception of the Gilley tragedy. For example, her distaste of Thad -- who became a self-appointed guardian to Jody -- is palpable. My own read is that he made a major difference in Jody's life, but he is a father figure, which, I believe, is threatening to the author. (And yes, I'm aware I'm doing precisely what I'm accusing Harrison of doing!) There are other examples of this as well.

Ultimately, the reader finds out more about Kathryn Harrison than Jody and Billy Gilley. The escalating violence, the suspense, the redemption -- all are dulled and the characteristic nuances of this gifted writer don't show through. While I recognize the courage it took for her to accept and write this book, I believe it hits too close to home for her to give true justice.

The author had a unique and rare opportunity to explore and report the murder of a family and the aftermath of its effects on the remaining members of the family as well as the murderer. Instead, she barely went into any depth about what led to this heinous event. She interjects with her own familial tragedy and compares herself with Jody and Billy and their tragedy. I can't help but be annoyed and find it slightly narcissistic and presumptuous of her to assume that we are interested in her life and how it relates to The Gilleys. I bought the book because the NY Times gave it a stellar review however, that particular review was misleading. The author is clearly not an investigative reporter. Objectivity and in depth reporting are what make true crime fascinating to read and this book lacks both components ("Just the facts, m'am"). While I sympathize with the author's own familial misfortune, I bought the book to read about The Gilleys not Kathryn Harrison. The author would benefit from reading Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" or Vincent Bugliosi's "Helter Skelter". All in all, this book was a waste of time to read.

Eighteen year old Billy Gilley's murder of his parents and young sister with a baseball bat was big news in my home of Medford, Oregon in 1984. This book attempts to look at the event and its aftermath. The participants deserve a better book. And author Kathryn Harrison needs to put down her mirror when she attempts to write about the lives of others.

Kathryn Harrison's biases from her own history of incest with her father come up repeatedly in this book. They are worse than an interruption; they blind her to the real story. She attempts to force this narrative into one of father abuse and victim child. This makes her sympathetic to the abused son, the killer of his parents and younger sister, it makes her frustrated that the surviving sister, Jody, is estranged from her incarcerated brother and is unwilling to assist him fully in making the case that his murders were the act of a "battered victim". But worse, it causes her to miss the big story of the aftermath of the murders, which is one of rescue and escape of Jody, due in part to her own extraordinary strengths, plus the help from a "father figure". Father's are not agents of good, in the world of Harrison, so this part of the story is distorted and lost in this book.

Following the murder Jody finds her way to the local Medford Legal Services office, where she receives what she has desperately needed her whole life: competent and caring adults who are working to protect and nurture her and who serve her interests, legal and personal. Jody and her two siblings (the murderer-brother and a younger sister who was murdered along with the parents) had been failed by everyone up until then: the child protective departments, the schools, the absent grandparents, and most especially by the abusive parents. She was on the verge of becoming a victim once again, this time of the legal system and the murderer's defense team which might have attempted to make Jody somehow a partner, or at least cheerleader, in crime, to attempt to show the murders to be justified.

Legal Services director Thad Guyer protected Jody from this. He also became an informal guardian for Jody. This blinds Harrison from seeing this story as one of a young girl's rescue (Thad's providing her with a safe home, his legal help to her, his leading her to his alma mater Georgetown and her launch into a very successful adulthood). Instead, Harrison expresses dark fears about Guyer. After all, Guyer was a father figure and therefore (in the Harrison world view) a danger. She resents his competent protection and defense of Jody's legal interests. Harrison seems happy that Jody survived and thrived, but she hates the fact that Jody needed a temporary father to do it.

This is an unforgettable book, an account of teen-aged Billy Gilley's murder of his parents and eleven-year-old sister in Medford, Oregon, in 1986. Jody Gilley, sixteen at the time of the massacre, survived. Much of the book is her story. Other reviewers have criticized Harrison for "inserting" or "interjecting" her own story. I can understand those criticisms but I do not agree with them. In the first few pages of the book, Harrison takes the bold and unusual step of explaining her interest in the Gilley murders, and she lets us know who she, the author, is. She is a survivor of incest, though that is far too simple a label for a complex human being. There is no attempt at cold objectivity in this book, because such a thing is not possible. Each of us has his or her point of view, based on a highly individual world-view and self-image. To this extent, all descriptive writing, fiction or nonfiction, contains an element of autobiography. Harrison acknowledges this, and the result is a powerful, moving, and deeply disturbing book. There are no simple answers here. The brutally abusive parents, bludgeoned to death by their eighteen-year-old son with a baseball bat, are presented as human being, however repulsive they may be. Jody, now a successful business woman in Washington, D.C., with a family of her own, is presented as a complex and impressive woman. Billy, too, has his own story. Harrison interviewed him several times in the Oregon state prison, where he has been sentenced to three consecutive life terms, one for each murder. The book does not answer all questions, and that is a strength, not a weakness. I have many troubling questions about Becky, the innocent eleven-year-old beaten to death by her older brother because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I do not recommend this book for everyone. Readers who expect a sensational and gory piece of bedtime reading will be disappointed. While They Slept demands careful, open reading, with all preconceptions set aside, to the extent that such a thing is possible. It will be rewarding, if troubling, to the reader who approaches the book in the spirit in which Harrison offers it.

If I did not know the main characters in this book, I probably would have found it a satisfying read. For several years, my family home was next door to the rural house in which Billy, Linda and Becky were attacked. I attended their triple funeral, and later, Billy Jr.'s trial. Many questions arose for me at that trial, and this book does not help resolve them in any way. If anything, it raises more.

Billy, Jr.'s consecutive sentences are currently under review. While he does not claim he is not guilty, even the Supreme Court has agreed evidence that should have been presented at his trial perhaps was not, and therefore his sentences may be eligible to be served concurrently. I felt that the author was overly sympathetic to the surviving sister, in some semi-twisted hope of identifying with her (there is shared tragedy in their lives). There were several times I wanted to tell the author to get a good therapist. Her personal story is an inappropriate addition to the story of the Gilleys: Three murdered souls have earned their own book, don't you think?

To the author's credit, the book was written well. It was engrossing and easy to read; I suspect that someone who was not there would get more out of this book than I did. I do not claim that the information it contains is inaccurate. I was simply disappointed that the investigation itself was not more closely detailed.

There is a really interesting story that could have been told, but unfortunately the author chose to integrate her own history into the writing much too frequently. I didn't really understand how she could compare herself to the woman whose own family was murdered by her brother, but she managed to constantly weave her own life into the book. I don't think this falls into the true crime genre, and it's definitely not a novel. It's almost another memoir (the author has written a previous memoir) that threads pieces of a horrible tragedy that happened to someone else into her own life. Overall, it didn't really make sense, seemed uneven, and was very boring.

Every chapter, I expected more than I got. I generally read this genre for point of view and found, like many of the other reviewers, that the point of view was muddled by the author's own experience. Harrison admits that writing is her vehicle for dealing with her own tragedy, her way of making herself whole and I can understand this and I appreciate her honesty. But I really wanted to know more about Jody and Billy and kept waiting for them to respond to Harrison with something different; instead their responses seemed oddly repetitive. I wonder what the experience of being interviewed was like for them and what they might have said had Harrison used more imagination in her techniques rather than depending on identifying with Billy and Jody's admissions. Harrison's imagination seemed to reside in her analysis of Jody and Billy's separate psyches and not in the structure of her book about what happened to them. The result: a somewhat scattered account that went as far as the author could go, given where she wanted to go. I felt that whatever was possible was truncated by the fact of the author's desire to match their experience, at least emotionally, to her own.

Even though she offers a few tepid disclaimers, Ms Harrison's creepy comparison of her consensual incestuous relationship with her father to a innocent family's slaughter is the first indication that the author wrote this book in a desperate search for theraputic attention. Harrison just can't seem to accept the fact that the sole survivor of this tragedy has moved on to build a productive life after an incomprehensible tragedy. Meanwhile, the author wallows in her own self pity as she clumps together an overly researched jumbled mess.

While They Slept proceeds by offering a brief narrative, looping back on it, embroidering it, extracting a little insight, offering some murky speculations, hazy recollections, hypotheses about motives. Two hundred pages of this should add up to something, but it doesn't. By the time we are a hundred pages into it, we no longer know whether we are dealing with the documentation of a story, a fabrication stretched out of the author's own history, the imagination of the girl who survives the murders, the prosecutors, or maybe just the author looking out the window and pattering away at her keyboard. There is no shape, no structure, only a fog of half baked psychoanalysis and unsupported meanderings.
If if someone says, Well that's what death and life are all about, then I'd say I already knew that and I didn't need to read this book to help me figure it out.
The one star is for the jacket design.