While They Slept: An Inquiry Into the Murder of a Family

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While They Slept: An Inquiry Into the Murder of a Family

2.94 of 5 stars 2.94 · rating details · 496 ratings · 139 reviews

Early on an April morning, eighteen-year-old Billy Frank Gilley, Jr., killed his sleeping parents. Surprised in the act by his younger sister, Becky, he turned on her as well. Billy then climbed the stairs to the bedroom of his other sister, Jody, and said, “We’re free.”
But is one ever free after an unredeemable act of violence? The Gilley family murders ended a lifetime o...more

Hardcover, 290 pages

Published June 10th 2008 by Random House

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Jul 13, 2008 fleegan rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

This was (or so I thought) about the 1984 slaying of the Gilley family by their son, Billy Gilley. Billy Gilley killed his mom, dad, and little sister Becky with a baseball bat. He did this in order to save himself and his other sister Jody from further abuse by their parents. He killed Becky because she wouldn't stay in her room while he was killing the mom and dad.

I would have probably enjoyed this book more if the author herself had not imposed her own life story and dysfuntional family into...more

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Aug 06, 2008 Megan rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: someone who doesn't love In Cold Blood

Disappointing, my friends, disappointing. This was not a book about the murder of a family so much as a chance for Kathryn Harrison to again muse on her own messed-up family life. Uh, Kathryn, you already wrote a disturbing memoir about that, and I read it, and I was properly disturbed and impressed and awed. I did not need to read a re-hash of it all. Not to mention that someone needed to do some editing of this book. Here is an actual sentence from the book:

A generation earlier, Billy's patern...more

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Jan 24, 2009 Judith rated it 1 of 5 stars

I have really enjoyed this author's past works, so i expected good things. This is a true story of a boy who beat his parents and younger sister to death after a childhood of mental and physical abuse. He spared his older sister, thus the story relates both the sister and the boy's versions of the incident, their childhood, and the boy's subsequent life in prison. The story should have been fascinating, particularly since the author was covering all the angles. However, the book is bogged down i...more

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Jun 22, 2008 Laura rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: truecrime

Very fine book about a killing in the family. I will confess to being a little nervous at the beginning, as Kathryn Harrison talked a lot about herself and her incestuous relationship with her father, and I was afraid we were veering into "Enough about me, what do you think of me" territory. But my fears turned out to be unfounded, as Harrison used her own story only to segue into that of the book's subjects: Billy, the son who killed his abusive parents and his younger sister; and Jody, the dau...more

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Feb 05, 2009 Bookmarks Magazine added it

Kathryn Harrison has clearly done her research. She gained the trust of both Billy and Jody, which resulted in multiple interviews and access to their personal papers. The narrative fairly buzzes with warmth and concern for the siblings. However, some critics, deeming it intrusive and pompous, took issue with Harrison's frequent habit of inserting her own painful past into the story. Others believed her suffering adds depth and authenticity to the narrative. Hailed as "a heartbreaking read" by t

...more

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Aug 31, 2008 Kellie rated it 2 of 5 stars

I thought this was a decent book for about the first 2/3, then it was all I could do to finish it.

The author's insistence of bringing herself and her own history into this book drove me nuts. Why was she continually trying to compare herself to the Gilleys? Often these were forced comparisons, at best.

Reading this book is like listening to somebody speak in a monotone voice. This style could have been very effective for a book of this type, if it was done better.

This is an interesting subject a...more

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Dec 10, 2008 christa rated it 3 of 5 stars

In late April, 1984, Billy Gilley,18, killed his parents with a baseball bat. And when his little sister Becky wouldn't go upstairs while he finished, he beat her, too, which eventually killed her. Jody Gilley, 16 at the time, stood frozen in her bedroom, disassociating, imagining she was a character in a book and wondering if that character would jump out the window to get away from her brother.

When he was finished, Billy Gilley came upstairs, bloody, and said to his sister: "We're free."

Kathry...more In late April, 1984, Billy Gilley,18, killed his parents with a baseball bat. And when his little sister Becky wouldn't go upstairs while he finished, he beat her, too, which eventually killed her. Jody Gilley, 16 at the time, stood frozen in her bedroom, disassociating, imagining she was a character in a book and wondering if that character would jump out the window to get away from her brother.

When he was finished, Billy Gilley came upstairs, bloody, and said to his sister: "We're free."

Kathryn Harrison wrote While they Slept because she was curious about Jody Gilley, and how this survivor has separated herself from what happened that night. How a life can split and become "before" and "after" versions. Harrison's own life has that same split: life before she was involved in an incestuous relationship with her father, that begins when he jams his tongue into her mouth at the airport when she's 20. And life after it ends, four years later.

I read this book because in 1987 a guy in my brother's sophomore class killed his mom and dad and sister and brother. [I knew them both. We went to a pretty small school: The girl was two years older than me and explained a crude version of menstruation to me at a slumber party once; the boy was a year younger than me.] Not surprisingly, this is the sort of thing that sticks with you for 21 years and for every who, what, where, when and especially why that goes unanswered, I've been forced to play scenes out in my head over and over.

Harrison meets with both Billy Gilley, who is obviously in prison, and Jody Gilley, who went on to graduate from Georgetown, officially hopping to the other side of the country and cutting ties with her past. Harrison chronicles the physical, sexual and emotional abuse the Gilley children endured. The way social services failed them, especially Billy, who was frequently caught smoking or shoplifting, only to tell authorities about the atrocities at home and then later deny his accusations at his parents' heavy-handed insistence.

This book is part true crime. The meat of the killings spread out over the course of the book. It's also part memoir, as Harrison tries to draw meaning for herself and her own past from Jody Gilley. It is also a notebook filled with the outtakes -- the story behind the story, how the story evolved, what Billy Gilley likes to snack on when Harrison meets with him in prison. It is a spoof on "In Cold Blood" if Truman Capote had written it in first person: "So here I am in Kansas, see, and I'm with my friend Harper Lee."

Then, it becomes a literary critique on the surviving Gilleys. Harrison analyzes Jody Gilley's writing, and Billy Gilley's children's book as though they are merely characters a college course. Jody Gilley's compartmentalization for survival. The way Billy Gilley smooths over the jagged surfaces of the story to tell something that is more succinct, a revision that changes the subject whenever his dead sister Becky is mentioned. This becomes exhausting. Frankly, I'm usually interested in what Harrison is writing, but I'm not a fan of her writing style. She is a flowery journal writer who should shoot for inclusion in Cringe. (less)

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Oct 19, 2011 Majanka rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, true-crime, adult

I don’t usually read non-fiction novels, and the true crime genre is new to me as well. But when I saw this book in my local bookstore at a significant discount (three thrillers/true crime books for 10 euros), I was drawn to it like a bee is to honey. I hadn’t heard about this case before, and the name Billy Gilley didn’t ring a bell. But I had heard about other cases in which a young boy slaughters his entire family, driven to the verge of madness by a vast ray of causes, be it abuse, neglect o...more I don’t usually read non-fiction novels, and the true crime genre is new to me as well. But when I saw this book in my local bookstore at a significant discount (three thrillers/true crime books for 10 euros), I was drawn to it like a bee is to honey. I hadn’t heard about this case before, and the name Billy Gilley didn’t ring a bell. But I had heard about other cases in which a young boy slaughters his entire family, driven to the verge of madness by a vast ray of causes, be it abuse, neglect or voices in their head. For Billy Gilley it was the first. He was mercilessly beaten and terrorized by his parents, the two people in the world who should have been there for him but weren’t. And then one day, he just snapped. His sister had skipped school that day, and got into trouble with her parents for doing so. Billy then told his sister Jody that he would like to ‘bash in their heads with a baseball bat’. That night, he did, killing both of his parents and his younger sister Becky.

Author Kathryn Harrison investigates the Billy Gilley case by interviewing both Billy and Jody Gilley regularly. She tries to reconstruct what happened that fateful day by both of their eye-witness accounts, and tries to give the reader an insight into the mind of a young man driven to murder and the aftermath of those terrible events for Jody. She tries to explain to us how Jody is coping with that loss, and the person she became because of it. As I mentioned, Kathryn Harrison ‘tried’ to do all those things. Unfortunately for the reader, she fails on more than half of those things, and offers a book that can be described as ‘interesting’ at best. It’s obvious, even for the non-experienced true crime reader, and a person with no expertise in the area of psychology or criminology whatsoever apart from some basic classes at university, that Kathryn Harrison did not do the Billy Gilley story justice. In fact, she brutally misused both Jody and Billy Gilley in her book, comparing her own bad luck in life with that of what Jody had to go through, drawing parallels that aren’t really there, applying her own mismatched amateur-psychology when it’s not wanted nor advised, and believing every word Jody says where she’s continuously sceptical towards anything Billy mentions. I spent more time being annoyed at Kathryn Harrison’s far-fetched and outrageously large narcissism, her inability to sound neutral and non-biased and her continuous referring to her own life than I spent enjoying the rest of the book, which is saying something.

Unfortunately, rather than teaching me something more about Billy and Jody Gilley, While They Slept taught me more about Kathryn Harrison than about anyone else. For instance, when she was eighteen or twenty (I forgot, because I didn’t really care) Kathryn tongue-kissed her long lost father, trying to make up for all those years of abandonment and trying to get back at her mother for God knows what reason. She then continued to have an incestuous relationship with her own father for about two years, in which he maltreated her and sometimes even locked her up (or that’s what I gathered). Eventually she got out, got her life back on track and has spent the rest of her life trying to deal with her past. It’s not that I don’t find it terrible what happened to Kathryn Harrison. Really, I do. Although she chose to have an incestuous relationship (she wasn’t really forced though, it wasn’t rape) I can understand where those feelings came from, and of course it can’t ever feel right to do that kind of stuff with your father. But let me begin by saying that she already wrote a memoir about that. There’s no need to mention these events occassionally throughout this book, to point them out to your readers in a casual but misleading way and trying to bring the spotlight from where it should be – Billy and Jody Gilley – to Kathryn Harrison. Sorry Kat, but this book isn’t supposed to be about you. You’re not the center of the universe. I understand you have problems, but you already told us about that, and if you want to, write another memoir, but don’t go ruin this story about two different people by trying to make it about you.

Furthermore, what angered me beyond belief about Kathryn Harrison is that she continuously draws parallels between the tragedy Jody Gilley had to go through – the murder of her entire family by her own brother – and Kathryn’s own troubles in life. She refers to both herself and Jody as being people who changed into a ‘before’ and ‘after’ person. I think it’s a tremendously preposterous claim of the author that both these things could even be compared. They can’t. I don’t know how it’s possible that Jody Gilley never once felt like hitting some sense into Kathryn Harrison, especially when the author grows so daring to tell these things in person. Apparently Kathryn lives in this illusion that her own life and troubles can be compared to Jody’s, that she went through so much irreversible tragedy that she’s entitled to behave like a psychologist, and that she has the right – can you believe the pretention? – to analyse everything Jody and Billy Gilley say, find hidden meanings behind their words and declare to all her readers who’s telling the truth and who isn’t. Unfortunately, Kathryn Harrison is nor a psychologist, criminologist, criminal profiler, social worker or a lawyer, and thus she is entitled to no such things. When you have no credentials in a field of expertise whatsoever, then stay out of it. She’s an author, and the point was that she had to write down Billy and Jody’s story, not mismatch it with several assumptions of her own, draw her own conclusions or have the pretention to tell her readers who to believe and who not to believe, based on amateur psychology.

But brace yourself, the horror isn’t over yet. Apart from her continous comparison between Jody Gilley and herself, and her unasked for retelling of her own memoir, Kathryn Harrison also has a clear and obvious favorism for Jody, and believes her every word contrary to those of Jody’s brother, who she doesn’t believe at all. However, from what I gathered from reading this book, sometimes what Billy says makes a lot of sense, whereas it seems as if Jody just suppressed those feelings and events in an attempt to live with survivor’s guilt. However, the author has drawn a clear line in this book: Billy is a murderer, thus he’s always wrong, and Jody isn’t, thus she’s always right. We all know that the real truth hardly is as linear, and that two people may have different reactions as to what’s going on, whereas that doesn’t necessarily mean one of them is lying. It’s obvious that in her effort to draw a parallel between herself and Jody Gilley, Kathryn chose a definite side, and she lost all abilities to talk about the murders in a neutral way.

To be honest, I think both Jody and Billy Gilley deserved an author who spend less time worrying about herself, and more time worrying about what happened to them and to listen to their story. They didn’t need to be psycho-analyzed by an amateur, and they definately didn’t need their case compared to an adult having an incestuous relationship with her own father, however disturbing that may be as well. More than anything, they deserved to be treated as main characters of this book rather than figures used for this author’s self-absorption. Moreover, Billy deserved the benefit of the doubt, definately in a society where the role of abuse leading up to a child murdering his own parents has been thoroughly investigated, speculated and debated by real psychiatrists and psychologists, and where the common answer nowadays is that it can be excusable to kill one’s own family when pushed to the breaking point by physical and mental abuse by one’s own parents. It certainly seems understandable, and we should not always judge people based on what they did in moments all logic left them. I feel that Kathryn chose to paint Billy as a murderer rather than a person, and it’s obvious that her opinion is so biased it greatly weighs down on the quality of this book.

Personally, I felt sorry for both children. Although I’m not a psychologist or criminologist or all those things Kathryn Harrison occassionally pretends to be, it’s my opinion that Billy was once again wronged with this book, in which he voluntarily participated but that portrayed him as being a liar, sometimes on purpose, sometimes without realizing it; whereas I thought it was obvious in some parts of the book that Billy’s recount of the events made more sense and seemed more logical than Jody’s. Rather than believe Jody’s every word, Kathryn should have taken into account that she should hold the same prejudice against Jody that she should against Billy. For example, Jody says she never encouraged Billy to kill her parents, but the thing is that it would be totally understandable if she did. After all, we all say stupid things sometimes, especially when we’re angered or feel threatened. Jody and Billy must have felt threated and scared continuously, and it makes sense that one would snap then. But of course, in her memory, Jody could have suppressed all the times she said things like that, trying to deal with the events and the guilt that followed them, which wouldn’t make her a liar, but rather a victim of this trauma. However, as I said, I won’t go play the psychologist as well, but I think that explenation would be a lot more logical than calling Billy a liar. After all, what would he gain from putting his sister in jail as well for conspiracy or something along those lines, the sister he tried to protect up till the point that he rather killed their parents then let himself and her get hurt at their hands one more time? If Kathryn tells her readers one option, she should also tell us the other option, and not just choose sides.

In my opinion, the emphazises was mostly on victims of a traumatic event, and how they deal with the aftermath, survivor’s guilt in particular. However, I would have liked a greater emphazises on what happened prior to the murders, the abuse that drove Billy to do what he did and Billy’s own path to redemption or dealing with what happened. Thing is that partially through this book, I began to feel sorry for Billy. One can never say that murder can be approved, but in some cases, like when a child has been abused, maltreated and terrorized until it feels like an animal in a cage, it is excusable. If Billy only saw one way of escaping and that was through murder, then it is somehow understandable that eventually he gave in and did just about that. Furthermore, he was already ridiculed by his parents and fellow schoolmates for not being able to write and read properly, something which we know realize – which no one really did at the time the murders were commited – were probably signs of a messed-up life at home. Add his aggression, the fact that from Kathryn Harrison’s and real psychiatrists’s descriptions he now seems as a loving and caring individual, the constant abuse and the never-ending fear of that abuse, and you have the circumstances set to turn everyone into a murderer. Billy was not accepted anywhere – not by the people at school, not by his own parents, and in the end, not even by the sister he probably cared for the most. It’s a saddening tale. Sometimes throughout this novel Kathryn Harrison – perhaps with her own sometimes twisted and perverted mind – often wondered aloud whether Billy loved his sister the way he shouldn’t, and Jody actually recalls Billy sexually harrassing her. I don’t know if that’s true or not, although according to the book Billy denies it, but from what I gather, in my personal opinion, I think there are two options more valuable than Kathryn just painting Billy off as a pervert. One option is that Jody replaced the image of her father harrassing her with the image of Billy doing so, because this would be easier to cope with, seeing as she already felt a lot of guilt for her parent’s death – blame it all on Billy, because he already murdered them, seems like a viable solution in that case. The other possibility is that Billy did harrass her, but in his own disturbed mind it was probably more a cry for acceptance and love than anything else. However, I’m not a psychologist, and this is just my opinion, as some sort of counter-opinion of Kathryn Harrison, who just portrays Billy as a perverted murderer.

A boy growing up in a household without much love, with a mother who backstabs him continously and a father who beats him mercilessly. He’s terrible at reading and writing, almost illiterate, ends up with the wrong friends and always ends up in trouble. On one day, he has had enough. He talks to his sister about murdering his parents. He takes her silence as an answer and that night he takes a baseball bat and beats his mother and father to death. Unfortunately his little sister hears something is going on and goes back downstairs. Panicking, Billy kills her as well, the only murder he actually feels terribly sorry for. He goes upstairs and tells Jody that now they’re finally free. Does this sound like the portrait of a mad man, a psychopath? Or does it sound like the story of a boy who knew no way out, who was let down by social services, school and everyone who ever could have helped him? Does this sound like the story of a boy accepted by no one, betrayed by everyone and desperately seeking the love and care he so needed? I think it does, and at least on that point, Kathryn Harrison agrees with me, albeit partly.

I would have liked to learn more about Billy, and less about Kathryn Harrison herself. I would honestly say that I’d like to see Billy out of jail. He has been punished before he ever commited the crime, and he has been punished severely afterward for something society nowadays usually excuses or advises therapy for. And at the end of this book, I began to feel sorry for him. I felt sorry for Jody from the beginning, but with Billy it took a while, but it’s there. Unfortunately we may never truly know what happened that fateful night – we have Jody’s version and Billy’s version and the pseudo-psychologic analyse made by Kathryn Harrison – but as always I think the truth is somewhere in the middle.

Let me finish by adding that throughout this book, Kathryn Harrison sees a lot of sexual references were there aren’t any, probably inspired by her own sexual relationship with her father, or by an overly-in-depth reading of Freud. However, once you look past her odd conclusions, her biased look on things and clear preference for Jody’s side of the story, her continuous self-absorption and her amataur psychology, you will realize that at the core of this book is a story about a family gone wrong, about abuse and destruction, about freedom, acceptance and love and about the ability to move on and keep on hoping for a better future. These underlying thoughts are inspiring, but are unfortunately overshadowed by Kathryn’s own life story and her occassional writing flaws. If you’re a fan of true fiction, or Jody and Billy’s story inspired you, then read this book. If however you’re like me and you’ll find yourself more disturbed by the author’s judgemental and erratic behavior than anything else, and you feel like writing her hatemail by the end of this book, then stay away from it as far as possible.(less)

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Apr 26, 2009 Bren rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: unfinished

When she was 20 years old, author Kathryn Harrison's estranged father kissed her on the lips - with tongue.

When she was 16 years old, subject Jody Gilley awoke when she heard her younger sister being murdered by her older brother, after he had already bludgeoned both of their parents to death.

Kathryn Harrison, in While They Slept, uses these traumatic events to draw a comparison between herself and Jody Gilley: "Both she and I had a previous self who no longer exists."

The trouble with this, of c...more

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Mar 01, 2009 Jeanette rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: no one really

id never heard of this but its requested on my book swap and i got it for $2 at the airport.

i have a few problems with it. kathryn harrison previously wrote books on her own experiences with abuse, which i have not read and know only about from this book. in this book before telling the story of which she is supposed to be writing, she talks about herself. a lot. and it comes across that when she was 20, she met her dad, he tongue kissed her at the airport and shes been a mess ever since.

based...more

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Feb 16, 2009 Pam rated it 1 of 5 stars

So far the author annoys me. She uses a lot of psychological profiling so I felt compelled to look up her biography. No psychology/psychiatry background. Annoying.

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Jan 15, 2009 Melissa McClintock rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 50-books-in-a-year-2009

On the fence about this one. It's the 1st true crime I've read in months. I think it was in the library because it is our area, the next "true" town in Oregon this side of the Cascades.

I liked the story and I liked the research and the way the story is presented totally non sensationalized. Not up to Ann Rule by any means, but not that commercial junk food so many true crime authors stoop to as if the actual occurance isn't horrible enough.

I just don't like the author's voice. I don't like it w...more

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Dec 16, 2008 Peggy rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is a good book if you like true crime. It is part journalistic reporting of the crime and psychological analysis of the killer and his sister, Jody. It is sort of scary in places, but the author delves into the mind of the killer, Billy, and tries to analyze why the killings happened and how his mind works.

Basic story is that the son of the Gilley family, Billy Jr. beats his parents to death with a baseball bat. He also kills his younger sister, Becky, when she discovers him in the act. He...more

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Jul 25, 2009 Allison Herman rated it 4 of 5 stars

The first thing to know before reading this book is that Kathryn Harrison has a bit of a sordid past. Her book The Kiss is about her romantic relationship with her biological father.
While They Slept is about the murder of the Gilley family by the only son, Billy. He kills his mother, father, and youngest sister, while saving his other sister so they can be "free". There is some question as to whether or not Billy wanted a relationship with his sister Jody and Harrison picks up on this quickly....more

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Oct 31, 2008 Nicole rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Nicole by: Elaine

Disturbing in a way that makes it hard, impossible for me anyway, to turn away. Unlike many other 'anatomy of a crime' novels the author is so present in the dissection that it's really the story of her research and reconstruction of the events. Not your typical Sunday morning reading, but once I started I couldn't stop.

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Sep 09, 2010 Pbwritr rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

Whoa...was this a thriller of a ride! And, unfortunately, it is based on a true story. A teenage boy killed his parents and his younger sister. I didn't like all the psychoanalyzing that the author did, as I didn't see that she had the expertise for that other than having had a life of abuse herself. I don't want to leave any spoilers for the book, but I will say that I ended up feeling rather odd about the daughter who survived. I'm glad there is such a thing now as the battered child syndrome,...more

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Jul 25, 2011 Roy added it

Better that I thought it would be. How much of this goes on that nobody knows about . In this particular case the son was being abused by his father continually and what would you expect this to be doing to the mind of the son at such a early age . No wonder he could not concentrate on his school ing . But it makes you wonder how this could go on and nohing was done about it , what were the social workers doing other than drinking coffee and gossiping about their weekends or what shopping they d...more

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Dec 13, 2008 Pat rated it 3 of 5 stars

A pop psychological study of the two survivors (a brother and sister) of the murder of their parents and youngest sibling. The brother committed the murders. Kathryn Harrison is the author of Kiss, which was a memoir of her own incestuous relationship with her father - started by her father when she was an adult. She continues to filter the world that she sees through the prism of this trauma. Therefore, she sees some underlying uncommitted incest in the relationship between the brother and sist...more

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Feb 28, 2009 Emily rated it 2 of 5 stars

On a spring night in 1984, Billy Gilley bludgeoned his father, mother, and youngest sister to death in their Oregon home while his sister Jody cowered upstairs. While They Slept is Kathryn Harrison’s rendering of the murder, its precipitating events, and its aftermath based on research that includes multiple interviews with both Jody and Billy Gilley. At the outset, Harrison informs the reader of her own survivor story (she was manipulated into sex acts with her father as a young woman) and thro...more

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Apr 23, 2009 Sara rated it 3 of 5 stars

In the end I found the author's interference in the story prevented me from being able to derive any satisfying conclusion of my own. The author is annoyingly judgemental, intellectual, and self conscious. I read the book for the hook, the story of the family and the murders and I'd like to make my own conclusions. It would have helped me be more involved if she were more journalistic and objective. Three's a crowd ;) It doesn't help that her personal story is boring, and there is a huge differe...more

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Oct 12, 2011 Dale Stonehouse rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book suffers from being uncategorizable in many ways. It is about an 18-year-old son killing his parents and younger sister with a baseball bat in Oregon in 1984, his motive being to end ongoing physical and emotional abuse by his parents. But it is not really a true crime book. The author delves into the effect of the murders on the son and his other sister who survives, but it's not really their story either, as the author combines their story with her story of sexual abuse by her father...more

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Nov 02, 2010 Karen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Excellent deconstruction of a brutal triple murder and the effect on the survivors, the abused teenage boy who committed the murders and his sister, who survived them with all the attending guilt, written by a deft writer who compares the before and after of this tragedy with her own before and after regarding the incestous relationship she had with her father. It's obvious from the writing that Kathryn Harrison meticulously researched the crimes and their survivors, and what results is an indep...more

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Feb 10, 2010 Antoinette Maria rated it 2 of 5 stars

Disappointing. 1. The author seems to have immersed herself in this family's story only as a path to her own redemption. 2.)The author's analysis clearly shows the limits of literary analysis as a way of understanding one's own or someone else's life. That is, it can work only to a point and then only if you're willing to disregard or ignore large chunks of the story. 3.) The author identifies herself so clearly with Jody and sees Billy so clearly as an "other" that she rarely questions Jody's v...more

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Jun 25, 2012 Audrey rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2012

This book kept me more engaged than I thought it would. In addition to being an examination of a horrific murder in the 1980s of a family by the son, it brought in some of the author's motivation for wanting to write the book. The author did a tremendous amount of research, interviewing the murderer and his surviving sister as well as other family members and people who were involved. It did offer, however, only her (the author's) interpretation of events rather than being an objective, third-pa...more

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Apr 05, 2010 Erica added it

it's weird, because although I gave it five stars, i could easily see how someone would hate this book. kathryn harrison (the author of the kiss, a memoir of her "voluntary" incestuous relationship with the father she doesn't meet until she's twenty) explores the story of the gilley family. when he was eighteen, billy gilley murdered his parents and his little sister, leaving one surviving sister. harrison talked extensively to both billy and jody to write this, but it's more jody's story. harri...more

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Jan 25, 2010 Ashley rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010-books, non-fiction, true-crime

This book explores the events leading up to, and the aftermath of, the Gilley family. Billy, 18 years old, beats his mother, father, and little sister to death with a baseball bat in the middle of the night. He then tells his other younger sister, Jody, "We're free".

Harrison does a nice job of drawing interesting, and at times insightful, parallels and observations throughout, but also seems to be continually wresting the spotlight from the Gilley family to herself. In the first chapters we lea...more This book explores the events leading up to, and the aftermath of, the Gilley family. Billy, 18 years old, beats his mother, father, and little sister to death with a baseball bat in the middle of the night. He then tells his other younger sister, Jody, "We're free".

Harrison does a nice job of drawing interesting, and at times insightful, parallels and observations throughout, but also seems to be continually wresting the spotlight from the Gilley family to herself. In the first chapters we learn that Harrison had a tumultuous young adulthood - her father, after being absent for her childhood, reappears when she is 18 or 20 and effectively turns her against her mother and begins a reciprocated, incestuous relationship with her that lasts several years.

Harrison is arguably a talented writer in some respects - she has a wonderful ability to place herself in others' situations and explore their inner workings, but at times her writing felt superfluous and overly complicated. I had the mental image of a middle-schooler abusing the thesaurus and then running the spelling/grammar check in Word to see if she had bumped up the grade level of her writing.

The continual re-focusing of the story back to Harrison also proved immensely distracting. She over-sympathized herself with Jody; she would state some particularly awful abuses Jody endured at the hands of her abusive parents but then compulsively throw in a mention of her own traumatic past. Throughout her research for this book, Harrison had many meetings and interviews with Jody, and I was fully expecting Jody to snap at some point - Harrison felt the need even in person, while Jody is recounting the most painful events in her life, to throw in references to herself; how similar they truly are, their different approaches to healing themselves, etc. Yes, the author undoubtedly has some baggage of her own - but to attempt to compare it to the murder of your entire family, to the survivor's guilt, to mkaing sense of such a tragedy at a mere 16 years old - it struck me as pretentious and immature. If you want to tell your own story, fine (I believe Harrison has written at least one book of her own experiences) - but don't compete with someone else's story. It was almost twisted in a way, like Harrison was jealous that the Gilley's story was more traumatic and shocking than her own, that she felt compelled to remind the reader of her own past; "I made out with my dad in the airport, though, remember? I told you that already, but I'm telling you again, in case you forgot."

This book could have been so much better if Harrison had focused and told the Gilley's story. As it stands, the author gets in her own way and is too distracting for the true story to shine.(less)

1 like · like · see review

Aug 27, 2008 Kayla rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: theory-nonfiction

I read "The Kiss", Harrison's definitive memoir detailing her sexual relationship with her estranged father, a few years ago. The story itself was stark and honest, and bore little indication that "getting over it" would ever be a genuine resolution. Instead, Harrison sketches a life in which rehabilitation and growth exist alongside the weight of trauma. "While They Slept", an recount of the 1984 murders of Bill, Linda and Becky Gilley by son Billy, establishes a connection between Harrison’s v...more

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Jul 14, 2008 Geeta rated it 3 of 5 stars

Well, I finished it. But I'm still not crazy about the writing itself--mannered, impenetrable at times, and just workman-like in general.

However, the narrative itself is compelling. After suffering years of physical and emotional abuse, Billy Gilley beats his parents and youngest sister to death with a baseball bat one night. Harrison examines the aftermath of this unspeakable act through the eyes of Billy and his surviving sister, Jody. Harrison is interested in the "before" and "after" version...more

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Aug 27, 2008 Elyssa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: truecrime

This book had greater potential. The author, Kathryn Harrison, conducted an in-depth investigation into the murder by Billy Gilley of his parents and sister. The "back story" is gathered from interviewing Billy and the sister he spared from murder, Jody. Billy and Jody endured severe abuse at the hands of their parents and Billy's transformation into a murderer is fascinating.

As some Goodreaders might be aware, Harrison wrote a memoir called The Kiss, about how her father sexually abused her. Wh...more

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Nov 11, 2012 Denise rated it 3 of 5 stars

It's hard to give a high rating to a novel that details such horrid abuse of children at the hands of their parents, but it does deserve to be taken as a serious novel. Harrison juggles the abuse of the offender, his sister, with that of her own abuse. No one is a winner in this novel, just makes me (as a teacher) want to be hyper diligent on making certain those I teach are safe, and is an unfortunate reminder that not all children have parents that want them to succeed...heartbreaking!

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About Kathryn Harrison

Kathryn Harrison is the author of the novels Envy, The Seal Wife, The Binding Chair, Poison, Exposure, and Thicker Than Water.
She has also written memoirs, The Kiss and The Mother Knot, a travel memoir, The Road To Santiago, a biography, Saint Therese Of Lisieux, and a collection of personal essays, Seeking Rapture.
Ms. Harrison is a frequent reviewer for The New York Times Book Review; her essay...more

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The Binding Chair or, A Visit from the Foot Emancipation Society

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“There must be many of us whose lives have been divided into a before and after, with an accident, a death, a crime, a crisis, some moment or year or relationship that came between and changed everything. I want to see how your life moved forward from that point of division.” — 15 people liked it

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