Reviews tagging 'Murder'

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold

92 reviews

celebrationofbooks's review against another edition

dark emotional informative mysterious sad medium-paced

4.25

Since it’s Nonfiction November, I figured I better catch up on some of the Nonfiction Book Club selections from this year. Though book club is on hiatus until May (I am so burnt out on virtual meetings), it is still a very near and dear piece of my heart that has helped me, and many other members of book club make it through the pandemic.

The Five quickly became a favorite of my coworker, Marielle, who joined Nonfiction Book Club after her own book club, YA for all flamed out. She’s recommended it countless times at the store and made it one of her summer picks this year as well, she absolutely loves it. The book itself focuses on the lives of the victims of Jack the Ripper. Their deaths are barely mentioned and there is no gruesome true crime style recounting of how they died – Hallie focuses exclusively on how they lived. She also does not go into speculation about who Jack the Ripper was, and besides a cursory mention in the introduction, he is not mentioned again in the book. So if you are looking for an actual true crime book about about him, this is not it.

The five women of The Five were a fascinating group of women, most of whom fell to the circumstances of being a woman in the late 1800s – it wasn’t an easy time for women on the whole. Their backgrounds were varied, some had wealth, others poor, one an immigrant, one a pathological liar – they were all people, people with friends and families who cared about them, people who were more than just victims of a terrible crime.

One thing that did tie them all together, however, was that at the time of their deaths, they were all in some sort of destitute situation, either due to circumstances beyond their control, mental health crises, or addition. In book club we had a fascinating discussion about female freedom and oppression as well as the lack of agency women of the late Victorian era experienced and compared it to our own. We’re lucky, in book club, to have a number of generations represented by our members and our best conversations always arise when we get to discuss the different experiences we all had with feminism and sexism growing up.

The Five is a snapshot of London and the lives of the people who lived and worked there in the late 1800s. As we always do when we find a book categorized in a genre that we do not agree with, with discussed in book club where we should shelve it at the store. We made well reasoned arguments for true crime (because that’s where we found it and we may not have found it otherwise), sociology, history and biography before ultimately landing on biography. We found ourselves appreciative that Hallie Rubenhold went on the search she did to reclaim this women’s voices so we found biography to be the best fit.

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Content Warnings

Minor: Domestic abuse and Murder

liviy0017's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Chronic illness, Death, Domestic abuse, Grief, Murder, Physical abuse, and Violence

Minor: Death of parent, Excrement, Miscarriage, Mental illness, Pregnancy, and Trafficking

betweenthelinesbookclub's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative sad medium-paced

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder

pollyflorence's review against another edition

dark informative reflective slow-paced

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Child death, Child abuse, Death of parent, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Infertility, Infidelity, Murder, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Trafficking, and Violence

kgrace_s's review

dark emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Death, Murder, and Violence

mwreadings's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

5.0

Brilliant book, I thoroughly enjoyed learning about the victims of Jack the Riper. It is a bit slow in places as it is a factual history book. The bits J found dry were the parts about finance and spending however it was interwoven and entirely relevant so it’s still worth reading. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Misogyny, Murder, Sexism, Sexual content, Sexual violence, and Violence

imogencate's review against another edition

dark informative slow-paced

4.0

I have to admit that when I first picked up this book I thought it was a true crime novel, and not a book about history. However, I enjoyed this book much more than I thought I was going to. The stories of the women are so heart-wrenching yet so similar, which gives us an insight into what it meant to be a woman in the late 1800’s. The only issue I had with this book was the fact is heavily focused on proving the fact that these women weren’t prostitutes, without mentioning that, if they had been prostitutes, their murders wouldn’t have been any less unjust or upsetting. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Alcoholism and Murder

rhiannonxgrace's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative sad

5.0

What an incredible book. I really enjoy Rubenhold’s writing style and find her to be an easy read, which can’t be said about all historians! This was a rough read, and more than once I had to pause and step away for a little while simply due to the content. But I am so glad I read this. It’s so important to move the focus back on to the womens’ lives and show them as fully fledged people, something that is often discarded when it comes to the Whitechapel murders.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Abandonment, Abortion, Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Forced institutionalization, Grief, Infidelity, Medical content, Medical trauma, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Murder, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Rape, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Trafficking, and Violence

abception's review against another edition

dark informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder and Sexism

cjblates's review against another edition

emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Domestic abuse, and Murder