Review of AS IF by Blake Morrison

 Review of As If by Blake Morrison

 

Having recently reviewed Morrison’s And when did you last see your father? and Things my mother never told me, I wished to review As If also.  Finally, I found the book hidden away on a shelf in one of my upstairs bedrooms. I notice that I bought this book way back on 10/6/’99, having been published by Granta Publications the previous year.  Reading the book once again, after a gap of twenty-five years, was a worthwhile exercise as it raises profound and still disturbing questions, questions we all continue to ask about the horrors we humans are capable of unleashing on our fellows.

For anyone interested in the mystery of evil in the world, in the psychology of bad behaviour and its apogee in murder, this is a book worth reading.   To further deepen the mystery, it deals with the murder of a little boy of two years old by two older boys of ten years. Again, it is written in masterful prose that becomes lyrical at times.  Furthermore, it is a deeply moving and disturbing book and Blake Morrison never disappoints with the profundity of his observations and the fecundity of his wisdom.  What makes it especially effective and affective is the author’s own personal insight into his encounters with the mystery of evil.  He is ruthlessly authentic and honest in his search for possible answers.  He is a keen observer of the trial of the two ten-year-olds, seeking to describe how he imagines these boys and their parents are truly feeling, as well, of course, as empathising deeply with the parents of the little innocent victim. 

The book gives a moving, horrifying and deeply disturbing account of the trial of Robert Thompson and Jon Venables for the murder of toddler James Bulger.  Why should we read such an account?  Quite simply, we cannot ignore the depths of depravity to which humans can descend.  We must surely seek to explore the possible causes of evil within the human psyche to better control the seemingly endless spree of violence and murder that abounds in society and to better help the survivors of these crimes and their families.  Morrison helps us face all these issues authentically and honestly. 

This book exposes the hollowness and uselessness of condemnation, no matter how justified, when it is divorced from understanding and true justice done.  As If is more than just an account of a murder, it is also a book about the nature of children, what childhood really means, what innocence is or should be and the state of the world in which we live today.  Whether we live in more evil times in 2025 than in 1993 is a moot point.  Arguably, we are and will be equally as evil as we ever have been from the point of view of motivation.  However, scientific advances have allowed the consequences of such evil to expand manifoldly and catastrophically, perhaps even to the extinction of our species.

Morrison also investigates his own adult fear of losing his own son – the fear of every parent.  He states “The terror – my terror – never left.  As my son grew bigger, so the terror grew bigger.” (p. 53)

The author raises questions such as: Should ten-year-old boys be tried as adults?  Surely, all the highly technical language goes over the heads of the accused? Have boys of such an age really the knowledge of the wrong they have done?  The justice system in England affirms that they do.  In law this is called “doli capax,” (capable of deceit/trickery) that is the accused is deemed capable of forming the intent to commit a crime or tort, especially by reason of age (ten years old or older).  In chapter 5, the epigraph from the eighteenth-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau stresses that “before the age of reason we do good and bad without knowing it.” (p. 82) The age of reason is 8 in Scotland, 10 in England and Ireland, 12 in Canada, 13 in Israel, 15 in Norway and 18 in Romania.

Morrison asks legions of questions, psychological and philosophical as well as legal. Is having your child murdered a worse nightmare than having a murderer or a child murderer for a son?  If my child were murdered how would I express my anger?   Is Matthew Arnold’s and F. R. Leavis’s idea that books humanise true?  What’s the evidence that children who read grow up less violent than their peers?

Like many good reporters and writers, Morrison visited the crime scene where James Bulger was brutally murdered: “I picture him lying up here, taking an hour or more to die, and of his killers crossing and recrossing under the bridge, under his little death.” (p. 78) I remember visiting the scene with the school caretaker where one of our past pupils hanged himself from a lonely but beautiful tree.  In an important sense, such ritual visiting is a way of coming to terms with the personal impact of such disturbing deaths.   Like all who sat through that fateful court case, Morrison is almost traumatised by the gory report of the pathologist for the prosecution when the latter enumerated every wound on the little corpse.  He, like all the uninitiated into medical jargon, learns the terminological euphemism for being literally cut in two, viz., “transected.”  The judge reminds the court that all that matters in this case are the questions: Did the boys know the difference between right and wrong? Would they have known it was wrong to kidnap a child?  Would they have known it was wrong to cause injury to a child?  Wrong to leave a child unconscious on a railway line?  The only answer to these questions, he argues, is surely “yes.” The expert witnesses called by the prosecution all concur that the boys are doli capax or are old enough to know what they are doing is wrong.

Sadly, in Ireland, we have had our own murder of an early teenager by two boys of a similar age. "Ana" Kriégel (14 years, died 2018) was a Russian-Irish girl who was subject to a violent attack, murder and sexual assault in an abandoned house in May 2018 in Lucan, a village outside Dublin. Two boys, known only as Boy A and Boy B, who were 13 years old at the time of Kriégel's death, were convicted of her murder, with one of the boys (Boy A) being further convicted of aggravated sexual assault. The two convicts are the youngest in the history of the state to be charged with murder.  The same questions were asked in our national media as are asked by Morrison in his book.  I am sure there are many other such cases worldwide, so reading this book will be useful for all in the legal, penal, judicial, social and psychological services.  This book insists, like all Morrison’s books, that we look inside ourselves, question our own prejudices, try to understand our own blind spots, listen sensitively to others and be slow to pass judgement. 

“What is truth? said jesting Pilate and would not stay for an answer." Thus begins Francis Bacon's essay on truth, published in 1597. Bacon was referring to the Gospel of St. John, in which Pilate wearily tries to make sense of the Jewish high priest's complaints against Jesus.  The question of truth was never more relevant than it is today, a time when it seems that everyone can make up his or her own truth at whim, even if it is obviously a lie to many.  Morrison writes an excellent chapter on truth or lack of it entitled “Lies, Tears.”  It is a complex question as to whether the boys were telling the full truth in the taped police interviews played in court for the jury. I will leave the plumbing of that deep question to the judgement of the readers. Again, Morrison writes incisively and makes us examine the question deeply and allows us make up our own minds. 

Towards the end of the book, the author raises the detrimental influence of videos/films (remember we are reviewing a 1993 book) especially the films Child’s Play, I, II & III, given the fact that Venables’ dad had rented Child’s Play III a week or two before the killing.  If Jon and Robert were steeped in horror films then the death of James could have been a copycat killing.  It takes little commonsense to understand how much more complex this question of the influence of the media is today, given all the social media platforms that children can be exposed to at any age whatsoever it would seem.  Again, Morrison speaks about the 1990s being an “Age of Anxiety,” but how much more anxiety-inducing are the multiplicity of stresses we are all exposed to in the twenty-first century?

There is also a chapter on beatings or corporal punishment used in the homes of the two accused where the author explores, once again deeply, whether such experiences could have contributed to their use of violence against an innocent child.  Morrison quotes from documentation about a case conference convened by the NSPCC, where 16 adult experts from the different social, health and education services gathered to discuss Thompson’s family situation.  However, no evidence of abuse was established.  Furthermore, evidence of Jon’s violent behaviour at school was discussed at several case conferences.

The author’s considered opinion is that the police and prosecution were vehemently pursuing a murder conviction against “two damaged and half-formed boys,” simply because a “nation’s conscience must be appeased… The public mood is bleakly vengeful.” (p. 169) Whether this is the case or not is for the reader to judge.  Like a juror, you must come to your considered judgement. 

Children are both gift and task, challenging work most of the time but also a joy to delight in.  Morrison describes succinctly his relationship with his wife with respect to their offspring: “Our explosions are gentler since the children came.” (p. 179) The author, when he talks to the lawyers after the murder verdict, agrees with them that some kind of sexual abuse was likely in the crime but the legal team on both sides were underplaying the abuse element because they wanted to spare the victim’s parents the worst. (See p. 199) Judging cases concerning all the forms of sexual behaviour or deviations between adults is hard enough but judging a case like this concerning sexual relations between children is “like trying to catch the wind in your hands, or to iron out the creases from the sea.” (p. 206)

Morrison is the forgiving type who believes that the two boys who were found guilty of murder “killed only half knowing what they were doing” and that it was wicked of society “to have paraded them, for nearly a month in an adult court.” (p. 231) He also believes that the goal of understanding is forgiveness and refuses to accept the contention of Alice Miller, the psychoanalyst and child abuse expert that “the enactment of forgiveness … brings the therapeutic process to a halt.” (quoted p. 239) Morrison argues that this is a poor model for society in general.  He can understand that for James Bulger’s parents not to forgive is human.  But for a whole nation not to forgive, he argues, is inhuman.  Again, this is a big question which the readers must answer for themselves in reading this book.  What we cannot doubt is Morrison’s deeply held views based on much pondering and questioning of complex human issues like the murder of a child by other children.  He argues that surely it is inhuman not to forgive damaged children and that you also should not punish adults for something they did as ten-year-olds.  I do not know whether I totally agree with Morrison here or not, but the strength of this author’s approach is that he makes the reader think and make up his/her own mind.  Morrison does see the danger in his own liberal position, i.e., moral relativism, but he pleads with us not to be too quick to judge these boys unless first “we look within at our own lives.” (p. 243) This book does not argue for a liberal position above and beyond a more conservative one, nor one that sets out an argument to win a debate, but rather one that explores the angst of the author as he observes the suffering of the murdered child’s parents, that of the offending boys’ mothers, the horrible fate of the innocent victim along with acknowledging the pain of the two guilty boys.  His position comes from a deep and wounded humanity that wishes justice to be done and be seen to be done.   It is a compassionate read that avoids polemics and raises important moral and ethical questions in a society all too unsure of its principles and fundamental beliefs.