An Evil Cradling

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He didn’t think he would be there for long; he felt that his captors had made a mistake, and kept insisting that he was not English but Irish. There are occasional beatings but at no point did I feel that the author was in danger of losing his life, those beatings said more about some of his jailers that it did about him; some were sociopaths who were often just as bored and frustrated as the prisoners. Even the observations that he makes about his own survival and mental state at the time feel distant, something that he's already thought through and is offering up to the reader pre-digested.

What Brian Keenan and his fellow hostages went through is terrifying and Mr Keenan's story telling is superb. I would almost certainly never have come across his book - nor picked it up if I had spotted it somewhere - if it weren’t for a reading group I joined recently. Considering he wrote it so soon after the events that transpired, it's impressive that it is so clear and so readable. Anyway,perhaps Keenan explains some of the feelings that he had while held for four and a half years,I don't really believe he explained those feelings better than others but worth the read.

This is not just a book about being captive: this is a psychological study into understanding your captors. There were plenty of outbreaks of violence and some kidnappings, but they didn’t worry him too much. An Evil Cradling is the story of his four years' captivity in Beirut and is recognized as a non-fiction classic.

Few people have been where these men have been, but everybody can take something away from their experience and find enrichment or hope especially when it is shared as honestly and eloquently s this. I must confess that I strongly believe that this experience of Keenan’s, when for five years he only had the words and the images that his mind could create, completely shaped his writing. It is a completely unflinching account of the brutality and suffering he endured; of the madness he slipped in and out of; of the desperation and the uncertainty and the fear.I would recommend this book to anyone - the writing and language used is superb (notwithstanding some ‘strong’ language used, mostly under extreme circumstances) and despite the traumatic nature of the experience, the story is oddly encouraging. Writing with such focus on self-reflection and reprocessing of events is less interesting to me than straightforward fact. The first section, on his time in solitude, has some absolutely amazing passages, that evoked a stronger emotional response in me than anything else I have ever read.

It’s tinged with black humour here and there, and a great deal of reflection and self-examination as he observes himself and his reactions, determined to stay strong. Their aim is to read books outside our usual preferred genres, and, where possible, to choose books written in different cultures.It’s definitely a strange and unsettling read, and about half way through I found I had to look Brian Keenan up on YouTube- to hear his voice saying some of these things, to know that he survived, to feel his reflective tone- I couldn’t carry on on reading with my own voice. His sisters were flown by Irish military executive jet to Damascus to meet him and bring him home to Northern Ireland. He doesn't spare any words to the wider political context, instead conveying only the facts that were aware to him at the time. I now know far more about the conditions of hostages than I could ever have imagined, and am sure I won’t forget. He simply tells what happened so he can lay it to rest behind him, and from what I can tell, he's gone on to do exactly that.

Just remarkable -- a work to remind us how expansive is the human mind, proving that cultural (and religious) education is directly connected to the development of the heart, in the sense that, early on in life, we have the opportunity to either help open that heart through compassion and universal inclusion, or slam it shut by demanding blind obedience to dogma, along with all the heart-mind's potential for good and beauty. Throughout the kidnap they also provided support to his two sisters, Elaine Spence and Brenda Gillham, who were spearheading the campaign for Brian's release. The start of the book gives a brief background to his life, and then a quick outline of his first few months in Lebanon. I'll start by saying that I started reading this book after I saw a Facebook comment claiming this is good literature.There were certain areas where I do think that he wrote in excess, and could have benefited from being more direct. I found myself googling Irish history (cause yeah, can't be expected to know that) and I'm still not sure I understand why they were taken and why they were released. Also extraordinary how restrained he is about John’s personal information and things they must have thought or felt about each other.