Reading Roundup for April 2024

 

Another month has passed us by. April has gone and what a wet and rainy month it has been. 

I am still working hard at training my puppy, Roxie. She is almost five months old now and her training classes are going well. It is very much still a work in progress though, although she is learning to let me get on with my work a little better!  It has been unfortunate that I sprained my ankle badly and so haven't been able to take her out for walks during the day. She is still getting out though as my husband takes her before and after work but I was enjoying my springtime walks with her. Never mind, my ankle is healing now.

I have read some great books this month. Have you read anything that you would recommend?

Books I Have Read

From Crime to Crime by Richard Henriques - This was a really interesting non-fiction book which I borrowed from the libraray. The author was both QC and later Judge in some of the biggest court trials in Britain. 

Murder on the Dancefloor by Katie Marsh - This is the second book in the Bad Girls Detective Agency series and was very enjoyable. You can read my review by clicking here.

Wise Up! Wise Down! by John Agard and JonArno Lawson - A delightful collection of poems for middle grade children. You can read my review by clicking here.

Red Runs the Witch's Thread by Victoria Williamson - I read this for the blog tour. Set in Scotland during the late 17th/early18th century. You can read my review by clicking here.

Before the Swallows Came Back by Fiona Curnow - This is a gorgeous novel teeming with nature, wild life and a great plot. You can read my review by clicking here.

Whitechapel Autumn of Error by Ian Porter - Set in London's East End during the late 1880's when Jack the Ripper roamed the streets. This is a good addition to the genre. You can read my review by clicking here.

Looking for Lucie by Amanda Addison - This title for young adults is about using DNA testing to find out about ourselves. You can read my review by clicking here.

The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and a Horse by Charlie Mackesy - I'm a bit late to the part on this one but enjoyed it once I finally got around to reading it.

Hard Times for the East End Library Girls by Jean Fullerton - This is the second book in the series and I enjoyed it very much. You can read my review by clicking here.

The Night in Question by Susan Fletcher - I loved this one. You can read my review by clicking here.

Takeout Sushi by Christopher Green - A collection of short stories which are mostly set in modern Japan. You can read my review by clicking here.

The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods - This was a delightful book with a dual timeline, a mystery and magical realism. It's probably my favourite book this month. You can read my review by clicking here.

Dangerous Times on Dressmakers' Alley by Rosie Clarke - This was a great book in the saga genre. You can read my review by clicking here.

Books I Did Not Finish

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon - This has been on my TBR for so long and when I finally got to it I couldn't get into it at all.

Books I am Partway Through

The Book-Lovers' Retreat by Heidi Swain

Does My Dog Love Me? by Graeme Hall

Sleepers and Ties by Gail Kirkpatrick

Widows on the Wine Path by Julia Jarman

(header photo courtesy of Florencia Veadana)

(all opinions are my own)

Whitechapel Autumn of Error by Ian Porter - #bookreview #blogtour

 Many of the women employed in the world's oldest profession were part-timers, spending much of their lives earning a pittance for long hours of tortuous work in other industries. Some attempted to live a double life of apparent respectability, keeping their night work a secret.

Maud Nash was such a woman...

***

Whitechapel 1888; a killer is on the loose and the newspapers are ensuring the nation knows all about not just the crimes but the terrible living conditions in which they are being perpetrated.

Nashey, a tough, scary yet charismatic man of the night, whose mother had to prostitute herself when he was a boy, knows the identity of the killer but keeps it a secret. He believes the publicity generated by the murders is forcing the authorities to address the poverty and degradation in the area. He allows the killer to remain free (whilst ensuring no more women are attacked) so the unsolved murders continue to dominate the headlines. He meets Sookey, an eccentric middle-class slummer and civilising influence. The two of them share a mutual friend, Mary Kelly, a fiery young prostitute whose back-story tells of how she was reduced to such a life.

To fund his surveillance of the killer, Nashey agrees, against his better judgement, to assist an old adversary to commit a daring night robbery under the noses of the huge police presence in the area.

Is it too late for Nashey and Mary to correct their mistakes?

***

Set in London's East End during the late 1880's when Jack the Ripper was a name on everyone's lips, the author has done a great job of capturing the menacing atmosphere in which people lived.

It has been well researched and there is more emphasis on the victims rather than Jack the Ripper himself.  The author demonstrates the poverty that Whitechapel's inhabitants lived vividly. It is obvious why so many people turned to crime and prostitution.

I liked the main characters of this book, namely Sookey, Nashey and Mary. Three very different individuals whose lives become intertwined as they experience the squalor of the area. They were well fleshed out and easy to engage with, although I did find Sookey's character took me a while to understand. However, there were women like her, Beatrice Webb/Potter springs to mind. Women who were committed to researching the lives of the poor.

The author describes the degradation and terror of living through such a time extremely well. A lifestyle that is fuelled by poverty, worry over where the next meal or nightly roof over their heads is coming from, coupled with the fear experienced of being on the streets after dark and becoming the Ripper's next victim.

Nashey discovers the Ripper's identity fairly early in the book, which gave this story a slightly different edge to the norm. The reader is let into this secret, and we follow Nashey's journey as he plots to reveal the Ripper's identity.

It is a moderately paced novel with a sufficiently interesting plot to keep the reader engaged. I think anyone who likes fiction set during this period will enjoy this book.

ISBN: 978 1805143987

Publisher:  Matador

Formats:  Paperback

No. of Pages:  384

***

About the Author:

Ian Porter is a historian, lecturer, public speaker and walks guide. He has a particular interest in women's history and social history. His novels are renowned for being extremely well researched and historically accurate. Whitechapel Autumn of Error is a typically feminist, social history novel that brings the dark streets of the East End 1888 to life. He has written several other novels including the highly acclaimed Suffragette Autumn Women's Spring, set during the fight for the vote for women, and a Plague On Both Your Houses, set in both London and Berlin in 1918/19 during the final months of the Great War and the Spanish Flu. Ian is getting on a bit (well, aged 69). His grandparents were young adults living in East London at the time of the Whitechapel Murders.

(book and media courtesy of Random Things Tours)

(all opinions are my own)

10 Year Blogversary - My Favourite Book from 2020 - The Five by Hallie Rubenhold - #BookReview

 

"There are two versions of the events of 1888. One is very well known; the other is not. The first one is the one printed in most history books......... Then there is the other version..... which most choose to forget."

***

Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffee houses, lived on country estates, they breathed ink-dust from printing presses and escaped people-traffickers.

What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888.

Their murderer was never identified, but the name created for him by the press has become more famous than any of these women.

In this devastating narrative of five lives, historian Hallie Rubenhold finally gives these women back their stories.

***

Continuing with my ten year blog anniversary celebrations, here is another of my favourites of the decade. Today I am publishing my favourite read from 2020 and it was originally posted on 27th May of that year.  This nonfiction title made a huge impact on me has stayed with me ever since.

I originally read this during the pandemic and my review reflects that. I have updated the review a little so there is more information about the book and the author but essentially the review is as it appeared that day.

I have a library copy of this book which I had borrowed before all the libraries were closed. However, half way through this book I knew I would want a copy of my own so bought one online. It is a fantastic book and one that I know I shall return to.

I suppose it resonates with me as my own ancestors were in the same area at the time of the murders. Flower and Dean Street is well known for it's Victorian doss houses and the 1881 census places my own great-great grandparents as being resident in Flower and Dean Street at the time the census was taken. It is a strange thought that they were rubbing shoulders with the Ripper victims and possibly even the Ripper himself.

The author has clearly done extensive research in preparation for writing this book and it contains a bibliography that runs to twenty-one pages. She has taken all of these resources and written an accessible and engaging book.

At no point does she deal with the brutality with which these women lost their lives. Instead, she focuses on the women who were murdered; their childhoods, adolescence and  adult lives which were cut tragically short. She challenges the belief that they were 'merely prostitutes,' as was contemporaneously believed and reported and presents us five women who were trying to live and survive during difficult times and in straightened circumstances.

Ms. Rubenhold has humanised and given these women a voice. Certainly, they were women who were down on their luck, homeless and alcoholic but with the exception of two of them there is no evidence to suggest that they were sex workers.

I wholeheartedly applaud the author for this book. She presents us with five women who were not merely victims of the Ripper but were victims of the time in which they lived. They were victims of their gender, time and world into which they were born - a time in which women did not have a voice. Well done Ms. Rubenhold for giving us the means by which we can see these women for who they really were and not merely as the Ripper's victims. I highly recommend this book.

ISBN: 978 1784162344

Publisher: Black Swan

Formats:  e-book, audio and paperback

No. of Pages:  432 (paperback)

About the Author:

Hallie Rubenhold is a bestselling author, social historian, broadcaster and historical consultant for TV and film.

She published The Five; The Untold Lives of The Women Killed by Jack the Ripper in 2019 and was the winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-fiction. It is the first full length biography of the Ripper’s victims. 

In 2005, Hallie published The Covent Garden Ladies, and was the subject of three television programmes, including the hit drama series, Harlots (ITV Encore, Amazon and Hulu). In 2006, BBC4 broadcast The Harlots Handbook, a documentary based on Hallie’s book which she presented.

Her equally celebrated second book, Lady Worsley’s Whim (entitled The Lady in Red in the US) about the 18th century’s most infamous adultery trial became BBC Radio 4’s Book of the Week in November 2008. In August 2015, it appeared as a 90 minute drama for BBC2 entitled The Scandalous Lady W, starring Natalie Dormer and Shaun Evans.

Hallie is also the author of a series of novels set during the period of the French Revolution. The first of these, Mistress of My Fate was published in 2011 (2013 in the US). The second, The French Lesson was published in the UK in April, 2016.

In addition to writing books, articles and reviews, Hallie regularly appears on TV as an expert contributor to documentaries. 

Hallie has a passion for telling a great historical tale and has a nose for unearthing previously unknown stories from little-known sources. She loves challenging our preconceived notions about our ancestors lives and revels in history’s surprising, unpleasant and gritty truths. Her extensive academic experience extends to research, teaching, lecturing and curatorial work. In the past she has been employed as a curator for the National Portrait Gallery, a university lecturer and a commercial art dealer. In 2014 she curated an exhibition on women’s reputations in the Georgian era for No.1 Royal Crescent in Bath and has been involved with several projects at the Foundling Museum in London.

Hallie received her B.A. in History from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and an M.A. in British History and History of Art from the University of Leeds. Remaining at Leeds, she embarked on her studies for a PhD and later completed her thesis on the subject of marriage and child-rearing in the eighteenth century.

She lives with her husband in London.

(author media courtesy of her website https://www.hallierubenhold.com/ / Sarah Blackie)

(all opinions are my own)

The Five (The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper) by Hallie Rubenhold - #BookReview

"There are two versions of the events of 1888. One is very well known; the other is not. The first one is the one printed in most history books......... Then there is the other version..... which most choose to forget."

Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine and Mary Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffee houses, lived on country estates, they breathed ink-dust from printing presses and escaped people-traffickers.

What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888.

Their murderer was never identified, but the name created for him by the press has become more famous than any of these women.

In this devastating narrative of five lives, historian Hallie Rubenhold finally gives these women back their stories.

***

I have a library copy of this book which I had borrowed before all the libraries were closed. However, half way through this book I knew I would want a copy of my own so bought one online. It is a fantastic book and one that I know I shall return to.

I suppose it resonates with me as my own ancestors were in the same area at the time of the murders. Flower and Dean Street is well known for it's Victorian doss houses and the 1881 census places my own great-great grandparents as being resident in Flower and Dean Street at the time the census was taken. It is a strange thought that they were rubbing shoulders with the Ripper victims and possibly even the Ripper himself.

The author has clearly done extensive research in preparation for writing this book and it contains a bibliography that runs to twenty-one pages. She has taken all of these resources and written an accessible and engaging book.

At no point does she deal with the brutality with which these women lost their lives. Instead, she focuses on the women who were murdered; their childhoods, adolescence and  adult lives which were cut tragically short. She challenges the belief that they were 'merely prostitutes,' as was contemporaneously believed and reported and presents us five women who were trying to live and survive during difficult times and in straightened circumstances.

Ms. Rubenhold has humanised and given these women a voice. Certainly, they were women who were down on their luck, homeless and alcoholic but with the exception of two of them there is no evidence to suggest that they were sex workers.

I wholeheartedly applaud the author for this book. She presents us with five women who were not merely victims of the Ripper but were victims of the time in which they lived. They were victims of their gender, time and world into which they were born - a time in which women did not have a voice. Well done Ms. Rubenhold for giving us the means by which we can see these women for who they really were and not merely as the Ripper's victims. I highly recommend this book.

ISBN: 978 1784162344

Publisher: Black Swan

About the Author:

Hallie Rubenhold is a best-selling author, social historian, broadcaster and historical consultant for film and television. She is the author of two novels, Mistress of My Fate and The French Lesson. 

She has also written non-fiction titles The Lady in Red, The Covent Garden Ladies, The Scandalous Lady W and Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies.

She lives in London with her husband.