{"id":317,"date":"2025-03-09T12:20:43","date_gmt":"2025-03-09T16:20:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.don-mitchell.com\/?p=317"},"modified":"2025-03-21T11:57:36","modified_gmt":"2025-03-21T15:57:36","slug":"shibai-remembering-jane-brittons-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.don-mitchell.com\/?p=317","title":{"rendered":"Shibai: Remembering Jane Britton’s Murder"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Shibai’s website<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2017, the 1969 murder of my fellow Harvard grad student and friend Jane Britton<\/a> took over my life. (The Wikipedia article is incomplete and misleading in some ways, but it’s a useful summary.) The case had been cold for years. It was solved — after nearly half a century — but along the way things got pretty exciting for me. And frightening, too, when the Massachusetts State Police sent a detective to Hilo to collect my DNA so that I could be excluded as the killer. That opened wounds I thought had healed.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>
Jane Britton in 1966<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

At about the same time, I began working with the investigative journalist Becky Cooper<\/a>, who was writing a book about the case, and its larger Harvard context. That book (We Keep the Dead Close<\/a><\/em>) was published to (well-deserved) rave reviews, in November 2020 and became a best-seller. I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s a wonderful piece of work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had been working on a novel in which the murder played a role. Becky and I had talked about how cool it would be to have her non-fiction book and my novel hit the streets at about the same time. The novel faltered (which is to say I faltered…but by 2025 I had woven the murder into my novel Mauka<\/em>) so in summer 2020 I decided to write something resembling a memoir about how the case had affected two-thirds of my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I published Shibai: Remembering Jane Britton’s Murder<\/em> <\/a>in late November 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are some fifty reviews on Amazon. This anonymous one I think describes it very well: “An utterly fascinating tale about the story of a murder of a close friend (about which the narrator was briefly a suspect), and its aftershocks \u2014 Mitchell\u2019s intimate memories of that dear friend, mixed up with other memories of terror \u2014 his early anthropological excursions at a far-flung island with deadly snakes and spiders, his intimate acquaintance with death as a volunteer rescue worker on the island of Hawaii\u2026. Now, almost 50 years later, in the midst of his quiet, happy life, questions about the murder resurface, and the trauma of the suspicion returns. The narrative brilliantly toggles between how the distant past of the murder calls forth other powerful associations \u2014 how we respond to death. Here there is much to admire, particularly Mitchell\u2019s precision of detail regarding his memories, but also his rare skill at detailing his thought processes \u2014 even regarding the distant past, drawing the reader into the way in which his brilliant mind operates, articulating complex and heightened emotional moments. Most impressive is how the resurfacing of Mitchell\u2019s friend\u2019s murder inspires explorations of great breadth and depth of experience \u2014 moving from Harvard to Hawaii to the island of Bougainville, touching on Mitchell\u2019s vast experience as a rescue worker, an anthropologist, a photographer, the \u2014 I was going to say \u201cnovel\u201d \u2014 but it\u2019s really a memoir that in parts reads as fascinatingly as a novel reads \u2014 engages us ultimately as a kind of love story, a story of a relationship that \u2014 as all of our heart-felt relationships often do \u2014 reaches out and, if we\u2019re as thoughtful and wise as Mitchell certainly demonstrates \u2014 changes us, to, as Mitchell realizes, \u201cmake yourself visible to yourself.\u201d I can\u2019t recommend Shibai<\/em> highly enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You can see and hear Becky and me in conversation<\/a> and I participate in another presentation about memoirs<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shibai’s website In 2017, the 1969 murder of my fellow Harvard grad student and friend Jane Britton took over my life. (The Wikipedia article is incomplete and misleading in some ways, but it’s a useful summary.) The case had been cold for years. It was solved — after nearly half a century — but along… <\/p>\n

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