As If | Granta

  • Published: 04/08/2011
  • ISBN: 9781847084170
  • 129x20mm
  • 272 pages

As If

Blake Morrison

In 1993 toddler James Bulger was beaten to death by two ten-year-old-boys. In the wake of this brutal crime, came one of the most public and shocking trials in living memory.

Written in Morrison’s supple, beautiful prose As If is a passionate, first-hand testimony of the Bulger case. It is a book about the nature of children, the meaning of childhood innocence and the state of the world we live in today.

A remarkable, indispensable book

Sunday Telegraph

Blake Morrison attended the trial and has written a lyrical personal and intensely painful account of what he heard and felt... This is an important, and, in the true sense of the word, dreadful book.

Beryl Bainbridge, Evening Standard

Morrison's rich, deep humanity bestows upon this book a rare honesty of tone and of thought which the subject hugely deserves... out of his anxiety and compassion, he has produced a book which is both brave and bathed in mature wisdom.

Brian Masters, Mail on Sunday

The Author

Blake Morrison is the author of several books, including And When Did You Last See Your Father?, As If, the essay collection Too True and Things My Mother Never Told Me. He lives in London.

More about the author →

From the Same Author

And When Did You Last See Your Father?

Blake Morrison

First published in 1993, Blake Morrison’s And When Did You Last See Your Father? is an extraordinary portrait of family life, father-son relationships and bereavement. It became a best-seller and inspired a whole genre of confessional memoirs, winning the Waterstone’s/Volvo/Esquire Award for Non-Fiction and the J. R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography. This edition includes a new afterword by the author.

Blake Morrison on Granta.com

Essays & Memoir | Granta 143

Court

Blake Morrison

‘One by one they’re led into the box. They swear their oath. They confirm their name, their employment, why they were where they say they were, what it was they saw.’

Essays & Memoir | Granta 143

God and Me

Blake Morrison

‘My hopes weren’t high, even to begin with, so I felt no bitterness when He didn’t reveal Himself’

Essays & Memoir | Granta 143

When I Last Saw Him

Blake Morrison

‘When young, we were impatient with our parents: now we want to atone for our callowness, to take measure of them, to understand which parts of them live on in us.’