Redeemable
A Memoir of Darkness and Hope
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- 9,99 €
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- 9,99 €
Publisher Description
The unforgettable story of a damaged little boy who became a fatally damaging man, who embarked on a twenty-year journey behind bars that would take him out of the darkness and into the light
'A painful and honest and beautiful account of a life blighted by circumstance and neglect, then wasted in criminality, and then, gloriously, redeemed by the power of the written word and by the capacity of the human heart for compassion and forgiveness ... Heartbreaking, poignant and affecting' Stephen Kelman
Born in Somerset in 1957 to itinerant Scottish parents, Erwin James lost his mother when he was seven. Shipped from home to home and subject to the whims of various caregivers after his father turned to alcohol and violence, he committed his first crime of breaking and entering when he was ten. His teenage and early adult years were spent drifting, and his petty crime turned increasingly violent, culminating in the terrible events for which he was jailed for life in 1984.
Entering prison at 27, James struggled to come to terms with the enormity of his crimes and a future without purpose or hope. Then he met Joan, a prison psychologist, who helped him to confront the painful truth of his past, and to understand how it had shaped him from such a young age. Her sessions transformed his life. Encouraged to read and to educate himself, over the next twenty years Erwin James would go on to receive a BA in History, and become a regular columnist for the Guardian.
Speaking to the very heart of the human condition, this is a book that offers no excuses – only the need to understand how we become who we become, and shows that no matter how far a person may fall, redemption is possible with the right kind of help. It is an important and timely memoir.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this dark memoir, columnist and author James describes the creation of a thug and murderer. After the death of his mother in a drunken car wreck, James suffered at the hands of a violent, alcoholic father, who dragged him across Great Britain only to abandon him with various relatives. James reacted to this unstable upbringing by engaging in petty theft, which led to stints in various institutions. Alcohol made him a pub bully and brought further encounters with the law. After murdering two people during robberies, he fled the country and joined the French Foreign Legion. When a former partner in crime confessed, James returned to face trial and 20 years in prison. The encouragement of a prison psychiatrist led him to the slow realization that he might still be redeemable, and he found an unlikely calling as a journalist and writer. James's matter-of-fact tone saves his grim biography from melodrama: in his telling, an abused child becomes an abusive man in a way that seems almost inevitable. Most fascinating are his nomadic treks across Britain, sleeping rough for months at a time while still managing to hold down jobs. Oddly, James leaves two pivotal moments underexplored: his decision to return to England, and the moments he committed the murders. These absences leave the book incomplete, but they don't detract from his depiction of the making of a criminal.
