Cries Unheard

Gitta Sereny

Editions

Review

When this fascinating book was published in 1998, there was - predictably enough - uproar.  Gitta Sereny spent months talking to Mary Bell, sentenced aged 12 to detention for life after she killed two other children in 1968.  Many of the critics of the book - none of whom had done anything as unlikely as read it - complained that no perpetrator of these crimes should be allowed to talk about it, let alone be given such a platform.

But even the briefest of glances at Sereny's impressive body of work (including the magnificent Albert Speer: His Battle With Truth pbk £12) would reveal that she is primarily concerned with what makes people do evil. The starting point of this work is to ask the question: what brings a child to murder another child?  Her honesty in dealing with the subject, and indeed her sympathy and understanding, mean that this riveting and complex book leaves the reader with a better idea (well, it left this reader with a better idea) not only of the way children are treated by the justice system, but also of what might contibute to such behaviour in the first place. - review by Dan Fenton

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