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jhbandcats's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
fast-paced
5.0
Jack London, best known for The Call of the Wild and White Fang, spent the summer of 1902 in London pretending to be penniless. He had a safe house where he could bathe and eat if life on the streets proved to be too much. He had the grace to feel guilty that he could get a meal and a good sleep even while London’s poor could not.
I found a quote by Jack London in The Five: the Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper. I’d not known he’d gone undercover to see the underside of London. I read this book at the same time as The Five, alternating chapters. This one took place almost 15 years after the murders and little had changed in the slums.
The misery and utter waste of humankind was appalling. I know the US had the same slums - similar exposés were done in NYC. Jack London wasn’t trying to say the US was better at dealing with poverty than England; rather, he’d seen something that prompted his curiosity so he went to investigate.
This book is written in an easy style, almost as if it’s a conversation with the reader. He quotes some of the many destitute people he encounters - there’s absolutely nothing they can do to get ahead. There was so much starvation and disease, and so many people had to sleep outside because they couldn’t afford four pence for a bed. More than 50% of slum children died before the age of five.
Illuminating and heartbreaking, and an exception companion to anyone reading The Five.
I found a quote by Jack London in The Five: the Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper. I’d not known he’d gone undercover to see the underside of London. I read this book at the same time as The Five, alternating chapters. This one took place almost 15 years after the murders and little had changed in the slums.
The misery and utter waste of humankind was appalling. I know the US had the same slums - similar exposés were done in NYC. Jack London wasn’t trying to say the US was better at dealing with poverty than England; rather, he’d seen something that prompted his curiosity so he went to investigate.
This book is written in an easy style, almost as if it’s a conversation with the reader. He quotes some of the many destitute people he encounters - there’s absolutely nothing they can do to get ahead. There was so much starvation and disease, and so many people had to sleep outside because they couldn’t afford four pence for a bed. More than 50% of slum children died before the age of five.
Illuminating and heartbreaking, and an exception companion to anyone reading The Five.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Classism, Grief, Abandonment, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Death of parent, Suicide attempt, Terminal illness, Addiction, Medical trauma, Chronic illness, Domestic abuse, Misogyny, Pregnancy, Suicide, Confinement, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, and Police brutality
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