The Devil & The Angel: A book about child murder and a strange night out

So this blog, as the title suggests, is intended to be a combination of two things: Books & Bullshit. The first part will chronicle my thoughts on what I'm reading, and hopefully help me improve my ability to discuss and review books. The second part will probably just be me ranting about my life, but hopefully it'll be more interesting than that. If the two parts of the blog come together, than that'll be great, but I'm not going to go all teen-movie and try to apply the meaning of each book to some piece of drama in my life. I realise that this might produce a blog that is two halves and poorly stuck together, but I've wanted to make a Review-Blog and Journal-Blog for a while now, so this is my attempt to kill two birds with one stone.

My name is Billy Whittard, and I'm a twenty-year old university student. Pleased to meet you :)

PART 1 (Books)

So the book of this blog post is my most recent read: 'Looking for JJ' by Anne Cassidy. I first read it when I was about 11, at school, and then never came across it again. It was one of the first "Youth Fiction" books I read when I was transitioning from Children's literature to Young Adult, and it was almost certainly one of the books that had the biggest impact. I was quite young, but I had experienced the murder of a friend about a year or so before, and though the murderer of my friend was 16, whereas the child-murderer is 10 in the book, it was the first time I had read anything written from the POV of the murderer themselves.

Without wanting to give away too much information, 'Looking for JJ' details the attempt at rehabilitation of a notorious child-killer, back into society. The present story runs parallel with details of the past, showing how the protagonist, then-Jennifer Jones-now-Alice Tully, grew up with a neglecting mother, an unstable childhood and a good heart despite a tendency to lose her temper in little fits of rage every now and again. Unfortunately, for 10 year old Jennifer Jones, that temper results in a terrible crime.

The story is very well constructed and written. It provides us with a lot of material to create sympathy for JJ, but it doesn't shy away from making it clear that JJ killed another child, and must be thought of as a killer. Still, it does a good job at humanising a child-murderer as the media so often portrays children who kill as monsters or creepy evil children without a trace of innocence. Cassidy is also excellent at creating her other child characters. Although, I felt the other children were largely had to empathise with, (in fact I'd say many of them were grating and annoying) I distinctly remember childhood feeling more like this complex social world of enemies and allies that is suggested in 'Looking for JJ', than the 'everyone-was-friends' notion that gets created when people look back and discuss their childhoods or when they talk of the recently deceased. I also felt the ending very appropriate, but somewhat inevitable. Nonetheless, I admire this book for its ability to tackle a controversial topic, and write on it in a way accessible to children and adults, creating a compelling story that I couldn't put down.

Additionally, I felt a lot of distaste towards myself after reading this book; although this was probably just because I was thinking about it so much. But I definitely felt as repulsive as the media which relentlessly hunts down JJ and shares all the grizzly details it can come up with in the daily papers. I devoured this book with a thirst for all the juicy details in the same way the media scrutinise real murder cases, making the experiences doubly painful for everyone involved, from the killer to the victims to the community.

It reminded me of the murder that happened to my own childhood-friend, and of a more recent child-murder that happened in a nearby town - the town that my friend Mel has gone home to. I'm sure if you read it, it will remind you of your own particular cases. I'm not sure if the book was meant to carry a specific message, but I certainly took away from it the understanding of how important it is to try to empathise. Even when people have done terrible things. And it also raised the importance of sensitivity and respect, and that these should prevail over curiosity and humanity's inherent interest in grizzly and morbid details.

I think Anne Cassidy's book addresses a well-trodden topic, from an original but potentially dangerous/offensive point-of-view and crafts a well-thought-out and sensitive story.

PART 2 (Bullshit)

I suppose the most notable thing to happen to my recently was a particularly peculiar night out. I had met my friend Mel Rigby earlier in the day, and she had invited me out on the spur of the moment, however, because she had gone for pre-drinks, I didn't actually go to meet her until much later than usual at around 11.30pm. I was to meet her and two mates in Academia, a local bar which was almost a club, very popular with students and which had also once been a church.

Academia has two main rooms and an upstairs, which was boarded off by a rope and security for a private party. Mel had texted me that she was upstairs to which I had exasperatedly told her that there was a private party and upstairs was closed off! She then told me she was part of the private party, and I should come up to meet them, even though I did not know the birthday girl herself. The strangeness of this may bypass you if you are not a penniless student as well. A private party at a popular bar! That must have cost money to book! To rent out and use for some purpose I couldn't quite see, given that nobody seemed to be having any more fun than they might on a normal night out... It was just surprisingly sophisticated for a student birthday. :S

Anyway, it was there that I met Mel's mates: Alice and Ruby. Both were very beautiful, long-legged and looked like Bond Girls. I couldn't really hear what was being said though, (as in Academia they play the music at a volume that seems to be trying to turn its audience deaf) so our introductions began with an awkward case of misidentification.

- 'My name is Ruby.'
- 'OH, AS IN RUBY RUTHERFORD?'
- 'Sorry?'
- 'RUTHERFORD?'
- 'Sorry?'
- 'RUTHERFORD?'
- 'Sorry?'
- 'ARE YOU RUBY RUTHERFORD?'
- 'No, my surname is Surrey!'
- ... 'Oh.'

This awkward encounter prefigured the later bizarro convo at the Vanity pub, where we went next for Cocktails. Somehow we stumbled upon the subject of religion, whereupon Alice and Ruby announced themselves both devout Christians who believed in the devil.

I should probably stop here to add a bit of context - I was also discussing my own beliefs, and I shared that I had come to the realisation that I was most likely gay and most likely unable to change that.

So both girls assured me they had personal experience of the power of God transforming the sexuality of people who had been 'of the devil', although when I asked them at what age they had chosen to be heterosexual, both admitted they had never had to choose. But they implored me to seek God, and suggested that they each knew men who had been gay and had been cured, and Alice even knew one man who had gone on to marry and have children.

This may not be shocking to you. Maybe a few years ago, when I was still religious myself, it would not have shocked me. I think what I was most taken aback by was the fervour with which they proclaimed that homosexuality is a sin, and an abomination. It was not malicious, however, in the way they spoke, but something altogether more scary; a sense of total righteousness, as if they were doing me a favour by informing me of my status as an 'abomination'.

After the Cocktails, Alice and Ruby opted to go home, and although Mel was returning home to her parents' house the next day, I convinced her to stay out and join me at The Angel. Our town is a small town, with only two clubs, plus The Angel, which somehow didn't really count. It is almost as if it is a secret club, but I suppose the real reason it isn't billed as a nightclub is that it isn't very popular. The dance floor and DJ area are hidden at the back, behind a run-down bar, which the barmaid likes to boast is the 'roughest bar in town'.

But when the students are in town (for I live and study in a 'University town'), The Angel is my favourite place. Depending on the night it is either full of hipsters who can't dance or losers who can't dance. I belong to the latter category, so that suits me fine. The drinks are fairly cheap, though not Free-Love cheap like the other nearby nightclub, which I appreciate as it means you're not swamped with sports societies downing as many shots as they can before puking all over other people's shoes. The music is either high-tech-dub-step-electro-synthetic-liquid-house (none of these labels mean anything to me- all I can hear is music that seems to me to be what epilepsy might sound like if it were a song) or good old sing-along songs ranging from Bonnie Tyler to Queen to Rihanna to the Beach Boys. Cheesy, mainstream, my kind of stuff. Leave sophistication to the sober, that's what I think. I want to dance to songs I know.

But when the students aren't in town, The Angel reveals itself in it's true form. Like Superman stepping out of his Lycra and returning to his crappy office job, so an empty Angel reveals a run-down bar, seedy people, dingy decor, and drunken loners. Of the creepy old kind.

Still, it wasn't quite empty enough to be so bleak when Mel and I arrived. We met my friend Catrin, a petite blonde girl with a heart-shaped face and a love of owls. Catrin was dancing with some other friend/acquaintances, namely Louise, 'Little Man' and a very drunk Fernando. The dancing was briefly punctuated when I endured a twenty-minute panic attack, and Mel loyally came outside with me and rolled some tobacco for me to calm down with. (I'll post more on these panic attacks in my next post.) Luckily, the attack subsided, and we went back in. The rest of the night was great fun. The sort of semi-drunk, bad-dancing, passing-by-in-a-haze, carefree fun that soars above its seedy surroundings, and can't be done justice in writing.

Until my next post,

Billy xx