Reviews

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

nightwillowfox's review against another edition

4.0

I really enjoyed this book it also makes me want to get back into reading historical books. It also makes me remember a person called Ruth Goodman who studied every day people and how our history books never talk about the ever day people.

I kind of wanted more pictures, I know that would have been hard but I guess maybe a drawing of the areas(if photos were not taken) the girls lived and such. But over all this is a good book and I would re-read it. I would like to get a copy of this book.

teaagent's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

3.0

anaffpereira's review against another edition

5.0

This book is important! Jack the Ripper became the stuff of legends, and even today he captivates people’s minds… while his victims fall into oblivion. How is this fair? This book makes the five canonical victims seen and heard. As the author puts it, “(…) the villain as metamorphosed into the protagonist; an evil, psychotic, mysterious payer who is so clever that he managed to evade detection even today. In order to gawp and examine this miracle of malevolence we have figuratively stepped over the bodies of those he murdered (…). The larger his profile grows, the more those victims seem to fade.”

cordetti2's review against another edition

dark informative medium-paced

4.0

fullybooked22's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative mysterious sad slow-paced

3.25

An incredible insight to the lives of these five women. Clearly incredibly well researched, it was a fascinating read which i think perfectly toed the line between being informative but not gratuitous in the reason for their lives being explored (their deaths). The tangential topics discovered (life in the workhouse, realities of homelessness and prostitution, life in the army, etc.) were masterfully done and i thoroughly enjoyed how the author covered these topics. It made for a very compelling read in that the story of each woman’s life was covered but in order to flesh it out details of their daily realities were included.
However, I would say that with all the information that was covered I’m not sure how much I will be able to retain. There was little respite in terms of facts and information — a book I think that would need to be annotated or just revisited in order to get the most out of it.
It is obviously such a sad topic but I think the resounding argument of Rubenhold exposing the misogyny these women have been treated with and the way their murders have been made acceptable by associating them with the sex trade was uplifting in the way she challenges what has become the popular narrative. 
It feels as though in challenging the now mythologised figure in history of Jack the Ripped Rubenhold also challenges the way we view women in history in their multitudes and I love it. 

blimeburner's review against another edition

5.0

I think that this is one of my favorite non-fiction books ever. I always find non-fiction to be fairly dry reading and hard to get through. The way that this was written made it very easy to really picture what was happening. The author took one of the most famous serial killers and really did something that not many people have done, made the victims the focus, and barely mentioned the killer. I'll admit that I had never really thought about the victims other than prostitutes who were unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I thought that because that is what is the prevalent opinion is about them. In news, movies, and tv shows, they are always presented as prostitutes. This book really made me see the Jack the Ripper case in a whole new light and wonder if maybe the police at the time hadn't assumed that the women were prostitutes and had actually taken a look into their lives, then maybe he would've been caught. If the police had gotten that huge fact wrong, what else did they get wrong? What else did they overlook?

wrh121's review against another edition

dark informative reflective slow-paced

4.5

booksbeforelooks's review against another edition

dark emotional informative reflective sad tense fast-paced

4.75

artistmaybe's review against another edition

3.0

This is a bit depressing to read but gives you a more accurate picture of the victims of Jack the Ripper.

aflovell2's review against another edition

dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

AMAZING. I took my time reading this as I was so enthralled by Polly, Anne, Elizabeth, Kate and Mary-Jane’s stories that I wanted to fully allow myself to absorb this. And WOW! This book should be on everyone’s bookshelves. The grip of the stories, the emotion with which they are conveyed, the tiny details that so brilliantly and vibrantly bring the history to life made this one of my all time favourite reads! It reads like a fiction as you really fall in love, cry, get angry, laugh, and cry some more with these women and their lives. The analysis of the Victorian era, the moral values of that time, the similarities that are drawn between then and now and the deconstruction of the assumptions and attitudes towards the Ripper and the women he murdered are so expertly woven in. The last line made my cry and I was so sad to put this book down but so grateful to have read their stories. “The victims of Jack the Ripper were never ‘just prostitutes’; they were daughters, wives, mothers, sisters and lovers. They were women. They were human beings, and surely that, in itself, is enough.”