Visiting hours A memoir of friendship and murder

Amy Butcher, 1987-

Book - 2015

"With echoes of Darin Strauss's Half a Life and Cheryl Strayed's Wild comes a beautifully written, riveting memoir that examines the complexities of friendship in the aftermath of a tragedy"--

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Subjects
Published
New York : Blue Rider Press [2015]
Language
English
Main Author
Amy Butcher, 1987- (-)
Physical Description
xvi, 249 pages ; 22 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 247-249).
ISBN
9780399172076
Contents unavailable.
Review by Library Journal Review

One night at the end of their senior year at Gettysburg College, Butcher and her friend Kevin had a few drinks at the bar before he walked her home. Sometime after that, Kevin went back to his apartment and fatally stabbed his ex-girlfriend 27 times in the neck and torso. Psychologists later deemed it a psychotic break. This memoir is the author’s attempt to understand her friend’s unthinkable actions on that spring evening. Through letters and prison visits, Butcher maintains her friendship with Kevin. Slowly, she starts to realize her efforts to make sense of this incident are proving fruitless, as not all traumatic events can be neatly explained. VERDICT While the writing is haunting in its eloquence, this is not a memoir of true crime but of a complicated friendship, omitting any perspective from the victim or her family. (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A writer and professor's account of the trauma she suffered in the wake of a murder committed by a close friend.Defunct magazine editor Butcher (English/Ohio Wesleyan Univ.) met Kevin Schaeffer, the sweet-faced boy who would become her best friend, three days into her freshman year at Gettysburg College. They were kindred spirits who "enjoyed familiarity in all things," found solace in each other for being social outsiders and knew "absolutely nothing of loss." Then, less than two months before their graduation in 2009, Kevin suddenly snapped and stabbed to death his ex-girlfriend, Emily Silverstein. Like the rest of Gettysburg, Butcher was stunned. But what she found especially disturbing was that two hours before the murder, a normal-seeming Kevin had walked her home from an evening out. The aftermath of the murder caused chaos in the author's personal life and relationships, yet she stubbornly refused to abandon her friend when almost everyone else did. Tormented by survivor's guilt and eventually diagnosed with PTSD, Butcher became obsessed with the incident and with trying to understand the reasons behind her friend's behavior. She scoured her memories and public documents for clues. What she discovered were dark truths about the nature of their relationship. Kevin was a depressive who had tried to commit suicide during his junior year. When he murdered his girlfriend, it was after he had stopped taking his antidepressants. Butcher had understood Kevin's impulse toward self-destruction because she had experienced it as a young teen. Yet she had done nothing to help him. Ultimately, the author realized that her distress came from the fact that her best friend's actions had presented her with a mirror image of her own heart. With equal parts horror and anguish, she understood that "the chain of events that led to Emily's death [were] events that could happen to any of us." A gripping and poignant memoir. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

My friend, the facts proved, had lost it, and I feared I was losing it, as well. I felt sick, confused by a world that seemed antithetical to the one I'd always known. My whole life, I'd believed the universe depended upon everything fitting together--a quilt of the most careful squares--but there was no fitting in what Kevin had done. There was no place for his behavior. It seemed chaos, plain and simple. Every now and then, it crossed my mind to look up my own symptoms: my fear, my agitation, my nightmares and obsessive thoughts. How I spent whole hours imagining Kevin's face, or the only recollections I had of Emily, or the moments--however few--when I could recall them alone together. The way I felt when it was night. Or when I was in close proximity to a tub. Or with a man, or with a stranger, or with someone I did not trust. All these symptoms, both big and small, I wished were less a part of me than they were. Later, I'd undress and stand in the shower until the hot water ran cold. I liked to feel it rush over me, imagine what was wrong as something that could be scrubbed away, like dirt. My fear, panic, all that confusion--I imagined it diluting and draining downwards, spiraling, traveling through a complex network of pipes and into rivers. I saw it float down the Mississippi. I saw it in the surf on a beach in Mexico. I lathered my body slowly, always conscious of my feet: my toenails, red and shining, against the clean, white, empty tub. Excerpted from Visiting Hours: A Memoir of Friendship and Murder by Amy Butcher All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.