Since I am shifting away from the historical fiction, I will cover other topics and share the books here which I read in English. Hope the opinion of the person who lives far from the UK/USA and never speaks to the family/friends in English will be of interest to those who visit this website.
The first book to tell about after the long break would be “Women who love Men who Kill” by Sheila Isenberg. I was always interested in “true crime”, but this topic comes to life sporadically; it comes and goes, there are “crime-free” periods when I do not look at the news, do not read detectives or search info on the crimes and killers, etc. It’s difficult to be fascinated with true crime, but not interested in the psychology of the criminals, investigators, victims, fan groups, etc. There are a lot of people on the net which say they are fond of criminals, but there are not many persons who actually MARRY them. This book is devoted to women who made that bold step.
The book is divided into chapters; some of them are devoted to the specific women who married/loved men which had killed people in the past and were convicted for that. The men were neither serial or mass killers; the authoress mentions that phenomenon (the popularity of serial killers), but those women’s husbands or lovers killed policemen, strange men in the street, girlfriends/wives – usually due to extreme anxiety not to be caught during shoplifting or some other illegal activity, or family quarrels. It is difficult to say if those men would have killed again if given the second chance. The women’s lives were different – some of them deserted husbands and families, others defended the criminals or served in the medical service, or just visited the lonely inmate without intentions to have any love affair. Sheila Isenberg describes the complications of their lives – no material support from the guy in jail, no sex, doubled responsibilities, etc. Despite all, those women were not going to leave their beloved prisoners – some unions lasted for years.
Along with the everyday details, the book contains a lot of psychological talk and opinions – and primary conclusions are that women who choose murderers come from problematic families, they are desperately fighting “peer pressure”, they want to settle scores with their fathers, used to violence. The authoress concludes those women are not able to have the real, “complete” relations and they are ok with the illusions – the men in prison depend on them, the women do not really love either, and everybody is happy. But if the prisoner is released – then both ways are possible. Either the couple lives happily “ever after”, or the killing spree continues and the savior becomes the first victim!
I am in two minds about this book. First, I do not agree calling only the union we are used to (house-husband-wife-kids-cat-and-dog) the completed one. In my mind, love can be expressed in multiple forms. Second, I cannot deny that the women who find themselves “prison wives of men killers” are often broken persons in many aspects, they may need serious treatment (not medical), but there is always a but… Are there many ways to be happy for those women? I think not, to be sincere. Complete healing of all wounds costs a lot of money; it does not guarantee a reliable partner. May be, this way is safer for them, after all, though the killers may not deserve it. But men are always luckier in the respect of love than women, that’s an universal truth.
In Russia, we also have girls and women who are called “zhduli” (originated from the verb meaning “to wait”). They correspond with the inmates who smuggle cell phones to jail, send them money and food and wait patiently until they return “home”. When a woman marries a prisoner, the couple is given the possibility to meet in person and spend three days together having full physical contact. Those women are widely despised in Russia since they come from families with low income, they are often not educated and they are mostly after “free sex” as well as their “husbands”. There is a short documentary movie “Zaochnitsa” (the word stands for “the girl who corresponds with the prisoner”) which shows different examples. One of the women filmed in the movie suffered from ex-prisoner – he beat her up so severely when he was released that she cannot walk at all now. Surprisingly a good example from the movie – a happy couple – showed a year later after the man was released from prison – proved unhappy afterwards – the man was a clever drug addict and the woman “ran for her life”, had to change the city and probably her name, to escape him. Sometimes ex-prisoners come to visit their “prison lover” only to r$pe and kill her child. The book by Sheila Isenberg does not show such “low” examples and does not delve into lives of people without good income or perspectives, but the authoress warns: beware of people who were violent in the past, that may happen again!
My Book Castle 