Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Look at me, doing a review this morning! I’ve got several books waiting (thank you audio!), but if I go with We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence I can pass it on to Britt today, and that works out nicely. The bonus is that I’m not going to bother giving you much by way of plot summary, since the title is pretty self-explanatory. The murder (of a female grad student) took place in 1969; the author (Becky Cooper) attended Harvard in the first decade or two of the 21st century.

Full disclosure here: true crime is not really my thing, although I find the stories interesting. I do, however, quite enjoy police procedural and courtroom dramas, so there’s that. Becky Cooper’s work, however, is not just a record of a crime that took decades to solve (if it is fully solved); it’s an exploration of gender in academia, a fascinating portrait of Harvard, and a rumination on the stories we tell ourselves and why. (It’s also a pondering on the “true” stories that we share, why we share them, and how they change in the sharing.) While reading We Keep the Dead Close, I found myself discussing it with my husband, rethinking my conception of gender in education today, and considering the tenure process with serious concern. Cooper’s generosity with background, context, and subtext brings her work beyond the realm of true crime, and while her choice to include an autobiographical angle might not be for everyone, it worked for me. As for her solution, well–logistically it makes sense, and philosophically I agree with her. (See me dancing around the spoiler there?) What more is there to say?

Ultimately, this is not true crime; this is nonfiction involving a past crime. If the concepts in my review sound interesting, you should definitely read the book; if not, it’s probably not your thing. I, however, found it completely absorbing.