You Could Do Something Amazing With Your Life: You Are Raoul Moat

Product Information

Hankinson has written a book which, by dint of its first person narrative and 'found document' essays, draws you in and never lets go. Eventually, cornered by the police, Moat shot himself. Andrew Hankinson, a journalist and a Geordie, tells Moat's story in the second person, which means that the listener is uncomfortably close at all times to Raoul Moat. It is an audio experience unrelieved by authorial distance or omniscient interpretation. The next section is health. You write that you have asthma and need more help with it. You write that there was a recent accident where your hand got crushed, shattering the bones. It has not healed properly and doesn’t work properly. It looks terrible.

You can’t sleep. You’ve always had trouble sleeping. You used to spend sleepless nights playing Xbox or looking through the box of cards from the kids, watching the shopping channel, or the Mr Bean DVD, the one where he gets sent to an art gallery in America and they think he’s a boffin, but he hasn’t got a clue really. He ends up sneezing on Whistler’s Mother, and when he tries to rub it off with turps the painting blisters up, and they have a grand unveiling, but there’s just this terrible hand-drawn picture that he’s done instead of the masterpiece. It’s hilarious. You don’t always sit and laugh all the way through a film, but that’s one of the funniest things you’ve seen, definitely as good as Laurel and Hardy, which is the kind of humour you like, especially Them Thar Hills, which is their classic, where they get in a fight and double-team this guy by putting treacle down his pants. You like that sort of thing much more than modern humour, which you don’t get at all. A remarkable book … [which] gives the reader the chilling, dreadful impression of being inside Moat’s head. Nothing less than compelling.It’s more than that. He can tell you’re depressed. Your voice is breaking. You’re 37 years old, too old to start again. It asks why you think this happens. You write about the bad parts of your childhood, police harassment, having no family support, worrying about your children’s future, and feeling alone.

Could you tell us something about your childhood and family including any changes or separations that you experienced? You’re not going to kill yourself tonight. You’ll give it one last try with Sam. It’s you and her against the world. Maybe they’ve seen you come through a difficult time and rise above the storm. Or perhaps you warm their hearts by making time for them when others chose not to.Stand in front of the mirror and convince yourself you are great. Tell yourself you can fulfill your dreams because you can make your dreams come true.” – Unknown

To find it, you need to follow your heart and listen to your instincts, to notice the things that move and inspire you. Then make the best of it. 2. Do everything with a purpose Start by doing these 8 things. They are what can change the course of your life and take you in the direction you’re meant to follow. 1. Find your passion Learning new languages, getting fit, achieving your goals, making money, changing your habits, conquering your fears, becoming an extrovert, etc. – these are just some of the things you can do in no time and with less effort than you think. You are the only version of you to ever exist in the universe. You are great, you are powerful, you are special”. – Unknown Everything comes from Moat's mind - from his recordings and writings - and the narrative Hankinson has woven is compelling, even if Moat's sentimentality, suspicion, and self-pity are never far from sight.

You Could Do Something Amazing with Your Life [You Are Raoul Moat]

Another letter arrives. It says they don’t normally reschedule appointments, but they know this is hard for you, so they’re offering you another appointment. It’s on May 13, 2008. really gonna have to stop reading such intense books in such a short space of time and I NEED TO STOP STAYING UP TIL 3.30 TO READ BOOKS TOO She’s honest, faithful and decent. You write that there isn’t much space to put all the good stuff in here. For the bad stuff you put, Claustrophobic, tense and truly original, this gripping account of Raoul Moat’s last days is impossible to put down. Andrew Hankinson has done a superb job in marshalling the source material and presenting it in such a way that the reader sees an unravelling world through Moat’s eyes. The result is utterly unexpected, leaving one torn between feelings of disgust, fear and pity. This is a book that stays with you for a long time. I had a lots of information to draw on. I attended the trial of Moat’s accomplices [Karl Ness and Qhurum Awan, both now serving life sentences] and the inquest for Moat. I couldn’t attend the inquest for Christopher Brown, but I had a written version of the coroner’s summary. I had transcripts of the hours and hours of tapes he recorded [on a Dictaphone] when he was on the run in Northumberland, and there were also some tapes he had made before he went to prison that I was able to listen to.

The treatment is unusual and impressive and thought-provoking, and the reading experience perhaps unique; certainly uncommon. It isn't an enjoyable experience, though. At best it's sordid (and I do mean at best, since making the reader feel sordid is surely part of the point) but at worst it's inane: there's a lot of repetition, and quite a lot of the sentences are sentences like: "Sean goes shopping." "You eat a burger." "Sean drives to Blythe."

You are way more awesome than you think you are. Don’t forget about your awesomeness today.” – Janna Cachola The techniques employed here test the limits of empathy then draw you beyond, as the book progresses and Moat (vs. the world) draws inevitably towards his end game Hankinson drops in parenthetically clipped phrases which, without fanfare, draw a spotlight onto Moat's incredibly skewed view of events around him and the controlling impulses of those he interacts with. An example of this is Moat ranting about being stopped by the police over 100 times but we are informed, with factual blandness by Hankinson, that he was actually stopped a dozen times. Like Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, Andrew Hankinson's You Could Do Something Amazing with Your Life You Are Raoul Moat is a non-fiction novel, using letters and tape recordings made by Moat while on the run to recreate his voice and thoughts in a chronological narrative of his final days from his prison release to his death. The result is an uncomfortable, claustrophobic read. You Could Do Something Amazing with Your Life You Are Raoul Moat is a short, gripping read that asks lots of complex questions and provides no easy answers. Another great True Crime book.