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Book Review: Halfway Heaven by Melanie Thernstrom
On May 28, 1995, Sinedu Tadesse, a 20-year-old Harvard student from Ethiopia, stabbed her roommate, Trang Phuong Ho, a Vietnamese immigrant and fellow Harvard junior, 45 times with a buck knife as she lay sleeping in their dorm room. Tadesse then went into the bathroom and hung herself from the shower curtain rod.
This grisly murder is the subject of Melanie Thernstrom’s Halfway Heaven: Diary of a Harvard Muder, a book that is, quite simply, the best true-crime reportage I’ve ever had the honor of reading. Think of it as a modern-day In Cold Blood — had Truman Capote actually lived in (and had a deep affinity with) Kansas and had the story taken place in the hallowed halls of academia instead of the bleak Midwestern landscape. You see, Halfway Heaven is more than just a collection of facts and speculation. It is investigative journalism at its best — with a very unique twist: the personal story of the author coming to grips with the major faults of the institution she loves so well.
Thernstrom’s connections to Harvard are a family affair. Her father is a Harvard professor; her mother taught at Harvard; and Thernstrom herself is a Harvard graduate who also taught there. She remembers, “I loved doing my homework in the stacks of Widener Library. I loved having lunch with my father at the Faculty Club.” There was no reason for Ms. Thernstrom to ever question her alliance with her alma mater, this university that had so enriched her family and herself.
Until the events of May 28, 1995.
With riveting, often poetic, prose, we delve into the mystery of Sinedu and Trang and leave no stone unturned. Thernstrom travels to Ethopia to meet Sinedu’s family (who claim their daughter was framed) and the other people in the young woman’s life. I can’t say that Thernstrom met with any of Sinedu’s friends, either in Africa or stateside, because Sinedu had no friends. And this sad fact is the pulse of the great tragedy in Halfway Heaven.
We also dive into Trang’s life: her relationship with her fractured family, her shining intellect and popularity, her trove of friends and supporters. To all outward appearances, one would initially think that Sinedu and Trang were more alike than different: two outsiders, immigrants, insanely smart and capable; but in reality, the two young women were polar opposites. Trang was everything Sinedu wished to be, and Sinedu — depressed, with no social skills, no knowledge of human interaction, and feeling rejected after Trang told her she wouldn’t be rooming with her for senior year — slipped into madness.
This madness is evident in Sinedu’s voluminous journals, which Thernstrom had access to. This section of the book is perhaps its most riveting. Thernstrom examines, with both a psychologist’s insight and a writer’s sensitivity, the words the dead young woman used to convey her complete and total disconnect from the world. The journals are tremendously disturbing and terribly sad. But one of the most heartbreaking moments comes not in the journals, but in a letter Sinedu writes some time before the murder. She composes a lengthy form letter describing her loneliness, despair, inability to make connections with people, begging for help and friendship…and then sends this letter to various people chosen at random from the phonebook. “As far as I can remember,” Sinedu writes, “my life has been hellish….Year after year, I became lonelier and lonelier….I am so desperate; please do not close the door in my face.”
Once Thernstrom finishes her thoughtful, insightful investigation of Trang’s murder, the book changes focus and delves in a different direction entirely: into the responsibility Harvard played in the crime. Cover-ups, spin control, secrets, administrative incompetence, bureaucratic red tape, the university’s completely inadequate mental health care for its students — all of these things (and more) are examined by Thernstrom’s brilliant eye. And what comes out of this is the distinct impression that not only have the lives of those Sinedu and Trang left behind been irrevocably altered, but so has that of the author. Once an insider thriving on the intellectual thrill of Harvard life, Thernstrom discovers the gross incompetence, liability, and arrogance that lies beneath the image the university so successfully manufactures.
With this discovery, she is forever changed: suddenly an outsider at the most respected school in the country.
Just like the two young women in this extraordinary book. Grade: A
Title Halfway Heaven: Diary of a Harvard Murder
Author Melanie Thernstrom
Publisher Doubleday
Year Published 1997
ISBN 0385487452
Snarkbytes Halfway Heaven is based on a New Yorker article also written by Thernstrom.
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6 Responses to “Book Review: Halfway Heaven by Melanie Thernstrom”
Comment away, my little snarkie-pies. But please play nicely. Poopy-pants comments (spam, hate speech) will be flushed down the shitter.
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WHAT IS A SNARK?
The Snark is a creature created by Lewis Carroll in his poem "The Hunting of the Snark". To give a proper description of Snarks, one must look no further than Carroll himself, who summed them up in one word: Unimaginable.
But this much we do know: some have feathers, some have whiskers. Snarks sleep a lot, yet they are an ambitious lot -- with very little sense of humor. They love bathing-machines and tend to bring them wherever they go; they are also handy for striking a light. Snarks live on a far-off island, a place filled with chasms and crags, and are constantly on the lookout for Snark-hunters. Their mortal enemies are hope, care, thimbles and forks.
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