No Beast So Fierce by Edward Bunker
“No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. But I know none, and therefore am no beast.” As part of my new revamped website, it seemed timely to return to my bookshelf of KEEPS. Balanced precariously atop a kitchen chair, I had a peruse of my shelf, and decided on the one of the oldest keeps still in my collection to begin. No Beast So Fierce is decidedly not a classic, although many books in my KEEP shelves are. I’m not even sure how I came to own this book as a teenage girl honestly. But it was one of the first books where I discovered the pleasure of reading a book where I decidedly did NOT relate to the protagonist and further more did not like him. I’m pretty sure if I had met Edward Bunker then (or now) I would be very intimidated by him, reformed though he is. No Beast So Fierce is the memoir of a man who has done truely atrocious things, yet somehow turned a corner, reflected on his life and changed. Usually I would read that and think “oh jeez - here comes the god” or “now it’s time for the excuses”, but somehow Bunker manages to avoid both these traps. He includes all the grit and gives himself no excuses while still showing that he managed to reflect and understand why he did the things he did. Often they don’t make sense to me and I’m not sure I would have made the choices he made even in the same circumstances. Unusually for any book, I didn’t actually want my protagonist to ‘win’ in this book, I was just fascinated to be taken on the journey with him. Also the writing was mediocre. The great quote at the beginning is the Shakespeare quote from which Bunker took his book title.