When Women Kill: Four Crimes Retold

"This was the other book that I had come across before because I’m doing a lot of work on Chile right now. I’m writing a book on Pinochet, so I’ve been reading a lot of Chilean literature. Again, it is wholly original. It’s the unpicking of four rather mundane but awful stories of acts of killing involving women. It’s taking the events of many decades ago and reviewing them with reference to a new set of understandings and the values of today. This book has a particular gendered aspect that is incredibly significant in explaining to us the circumstances in which, in Chile, society came down like a ton of bricks on individual women who, for one reason or another, found themselves in a situation in which they were involved in an act of killing. Once again, though, it’s universal. These stories felt pretty familiar to me, living in London, because these are the kinds of stories that would have taken place here. I suppose I was aware of these issues and what it’s like to be a woman in a particular society because I’d read a book many years ago by Helena Kennedy, Eve Was Framed . By revisiting these four stories, this book allows us to look at the values of those times and the values of our times and think long and hard about what has changed. It’s also sublimely written. This is a real writer. There are people who write and there are writers, and this is a writer. I’d put Osebol in that category also. That’s not dispositive, but it really is exciting to be in the hands of someone who is a professional wordsmith. The craft is different. You are in the hands of an individual with different qualities. It’s not just a story to be told, but the manner of the telling. Well, read the one about the maid who kills two of the children in her charge. It’s a really powerful book."