Discover Top Posts Tagged with #becky cooper

books I’ve read in 2025 📖 no. 092

We Keep the Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half Century of Silence by Becky Cooper

“It was told to me my junior year of college like a ghost story: a young woman, a Harvard graduate student of archaeology, was bludgeoned to death in her off-campus apartment in January 1969. No one heard any screams; nothing was stolen. Decades passed, and her case remained unsolved. Unsolved, that is, until yesterday.”

#books #2025 reads #we keep the dead close #nonfiction #Becky cooper #booklr #lit edit

Student: every time I see you, you're reading a different book

Me, looking at the book in his hands: I mean...so are you

#we keep the dead close #a murder at harvard and a half century of silence #becky cooper #true crime #books #library books #reading #reading list

WE KEEP THE DEAD CLOSE: A MURDER AT HARVARD AND A HALF CENTURY OF SILENCE BY BECKY COOPER

#we keep the dead close #becky cooper #quotes #words

I googled We Keep the Dead Close a little and was intrigued! Can you tell me what you liked about it?

oh yey!! i'm always happy to rave about a book i've enjoyed, so i can totally share my thoughts with you :)

we keep the dead close: a murder at harvard and a half century of silence is less a standard true crime book, and more half memoir and half a chronicling of the author's meticulous research process. as an undergrad at harvard, becky cooper, heard repeated tellings of a near mythic campus legend: of a nameless female grad student who had an affair with a tenured archaeology professor in the '60s who murdered her in a ritualistic manner and got away with it thanks to the omnipotent powers-that-be at harvard and the case remained unsolved ever after.

the story stayed with cooper until she felt compelled to learn all that she could over the course of the next decade. to untangle the truth from the cautionary tales that were whispered in the hallowed hallways of harvard. the very beginning of this story starts with the uncovering of a name: jane britton, who was so much more than the victim she became in the final moments of her life. and then it unfurls from there: not just to the facts surrounding the murder, but also the intimate details that make up a life, both loved and lost, and the surrounding culture that could allow this silence to perpetuate for decades while recognizing the power structures that still thrive in today's world.

this book is an exhaustive record of cooper's research efforts—the archives she dug through, the events she snuck into, the websites she trawled, the doors she knocked on, the people who would and wouldn't talk to her, the jobs she accepted and turned down to help her make the time to tell this story—but also an examination of her own biases and motives. how we affect the stories that are told and how we tell them, and also the ways in which we, explicitly or not, try to force facts to fit into familiar narrative story beats. it's also concerned with the power structures in the world of academia, specifically at harvard, that so often protect powerful men at the expense of vulnerable women, no matter how talented and promising and innocent, all in the name of reputation and tradition.

potential suspects rise and fall away like waves crashing on a shore as cooper and those who loved jane try to make sense of the violence that ended her life so young, but this is not a book that is confined to the whodunit nature of most true crime tales. rather, cooper is more compelled to tell jane's story in a way that both honors jane and is honest about her.

if you like non-fiction, have ever enjoyed true crime, and have some time to devote yourself to a 400+ page book, i highly recommend we keep the dead close. the case was solved in 2018 while cooper was still writing the story (though perhaps some answers bring forth only more questions), but i recommend against googling the case beforehand and instead letting the experience wash over you.

#ask #anonymous #we keep the dead close #becky cooper #there's one particular moment that struck me in all the ways grief can be quiet and profound #while cooper is doing her research and digging through the archives she finds a journal dated after jane's death with her name on it #and cooper comes to realize that #the summer after jane died her boyfriend returned to the archaeological dig they'd been on the year before #and he'd been assigned jane's old trench. and so he put her name with his on the journal to record his notes.#he did it quietly. he did it without comment. and not only did he list her name but he put it first.#in the world of academics where competitiveness runs rampant...this boy who loved this girl gave her the credit she deserved #that was denied to her by the ruthlessness of chance

Worldbuilding/Etc: My Soulmate AU [2]

-Metas with long lives, especially speedsters, with mortal soulmates often get another soulmate later on.

-^These tend to be people who never had soulmates/soulmates died when they were very young. It's basically never "a baby got born and they're this immortal's soulmate now". Because this isn't Twilight and when I say I like age difference that's not even a little bit what I mean

-In one of the many now-erased timelines, Eobard Thawne did have another, platonic, soulmate, whose name was Dawn West-Allen. NO ONE was happy about that, and it's better for everyone that didn't happen

-^I mean, Iris and Barry were not in a happy marriage and that timeline was a trashfire, so it's so good in general that it got replaced, but also like, Eobard Leave Barry And His Kids Alone

-But yeah it is very much more likely that a speedster's second soulmate will be a speedster as well. It's actually pretty common in the future and taught in schools as the "Speedster Effect"

-If Snart died, Barry would never get a second soulmate tho. That one's it for him

-Becky Cooper, Barry's high school ex, is bi like Barry and is now dating her soulmate, who is a woman! She met her at a concert, because the girl started having trouble breathing bc asthma, and Becky could feel her getting nervous/freaking out before it actually kicked in badly

-No one wanted the Becky Cooper lore, but I do have it

-In this timeline, Iris and Barry are never ever together. That's simply not a thing

-When Barry was in high school, he briefly thought Tony Woodward might be his soulmate. Thankfully, he was not

-The day two people confirm they're each other's soulmates is often called a "Union Day" and is often celebrated similar to an anniversary

#coldflash corner's soulmate au #the flash tv #barry allen #becky cooper #eobard thawne

If you like non-fiction and true crime books I really recommend this one. The author is investigating a murder case from the 60s. A young woman was murdered and no one really bothered to find the person responsible. Men in power failed her, but decades later another woman is trying to bring her justice. Becky Cooper did an enormous amount of research to investigate the victim's (whose name is Jane Britton) story. Unlike many true crime authors, her main focus isn't on the murderer. She's interested in who Jane was as a person. The more she learns about her, the more she feels connected to her. It's a great example of women caring for other, forgotten and silenced women, even though the two lived decades apart.