Slow Life Blog from the Lake District
  • Home
  • About Me
  • Contact Me

People who Eat Darkness – The Fate of Lucie Blackman

23/10/2011

0 Comments

 
Picture
One November morning in 1995 Lucie Blackman’s mother, Jane, received a phone call from a stranger, a man, who told her that her husband, Tim, was sleeping with his wife.  Jane’s reaction was to throw Tim out of the front door and his clothes out of the bedroom window.  From that moment her life was dominated by bitterness, vindictiveness and thoughts of revenge. Any semblance of happiness in the Blackman family was destroyed.
But what began as a routinely disfunctional family became a tragic one.  Within a few years Lucie, who had gone to Tokyo to earn money to cover her credit card debts, had been raped and murdered; her sister Sophie had been confined to a mental hospital; her brother had had to leave university because of a nervous breakdown and her father had become an object of vilification in the tabloid press.

The story of the destruction of the Blackman family is told by Richard Lloyd Parry in his book, “People Who Eat Darkness”.  This true story is made all the more compelling by the fact that both Lucie and her killer kept diaries and because of the wealth of detail which emerged during a ten year trial. The case was extensively covered in the English press and the author does an excellent job in correcting many of the myths and prejudices about Japanese life which appeared in the papers.  But life in England is also laid bare and there are so many difficult truths that I would be uncomfortable about any of my Japanese friends reading it.  No explanation is given for the enigmatic title “People Who Eat Darkness”, but it may just be us.

Postscript: To give an idea of how compelling this book is, I received it from Amazon at lunchtime yesterday, and although I had lots of things planned, as soon as I’d started the first page I had to put everything on hold until I’d finished it (all 385 pages).

Since writing the above I have learnt that both Rupert and Sophie Blackman are making a good recovery from their trauma. Rupert is a musician living happily in Utrecht and Sophie works for the NHS is Hertfordshire. Their father, Tim, described by the author as “likeable and admirable” runs the Lucie Blackman Trust Missing Abroad programme, with the support of the Foreign Office – but still has to battle with his ex-wife’s relentlessy destructive efforts.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.


    ​About Slow Life

    The idea of Slow Life is to take the principles of Slow Food, which are “good, clean and fair”, and extend them to life in general.

    Here in the Lake District, the air is clean, the pace is slow and the atmosphere is calm. If we don’t grow food ourselves, we can buy it in friendly small shops, where you know the quality is going to be the best.

    This blog is a celebration of the Slow Life, with forays into the world of design, music, the arts, gardens, and my particular weakness, Japan.

    Archives

    June 2017
    December 2016
    August 2015
    May 2015
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009

    RSS Feed

Home   |   About Me   |   Contact Me

Jonathan Denby's Slow Life blog from the Lake District

© Copyright Slow Life 2020. All rights reserved   |   cookie policy    |   Site by Treble3
  • Home
  • About Me
  • Contact Me