Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.4 AVERAGE
3.4 AVERAGE
informative
mysterious
fast-paced
First of all, I have to applaud Kate Summerscale for what seems to be an intimidating amount of research to put this book together. She weaves together her sources nicely to give the best depiction possible of Robert Coombes' life, from murdering his mother on through adulthood.
Unfortunately, there just isn't a lot of material available. I was hoping that Summerscale would explore Coombes' motivations and personality, but she just presents popular theories of the time (mental illness on his part and/or his mother's, abuse, the sinister influence of penny dreadfuls) without doing much to interpret the possibilities. She struck me as a bit too eager to believe Robert and Nattie's testimony.
Following Robert's trial, much of the book becomes about contextualizing his life in the asylum and beyond. I appreciate Summerscale providing enough history for us to understand how Robert fit into his new life, but there are so many examples that are only tangentially related to the Coombes case that it feels like Summerscale may have been padding out the story to make it book length. It was only toward the end when Summerscale struck upon a human connection to Robert that I began to care again. If you're a fan of history/true crime that's based on newspapers/paper records and little else, you may find this work intriguing, but for me, it was far too dry.
I received a galley from Penguin's First to Read program in exchange for my honest review.
Unfortunately, there just isn't a lot of material available. I was hoping that Summerscale would explore Coombes' motivations and personality, but she just presents popular theories of the time (mental illness on his part and/or his mother's, abuse, the sinister influence of penny dreadfuls) without doing much to interpret the possibilities. She struck me as a bit too eager to believe Robert and Nattie's testimony.
Following Robert's trial, much of the book becomes about contextualizing his life in the asylum and beyond. I appreciate Summerscale providing enough history for us to understand how Robert fit into his new life, but there are so many examples that are only tangentially related to the Coombes case that it feels like Summerscale may have been padding out the story to make it book length. It was only toward the end when Summerscale struck upon a human connection to Robert that I began to care again. If you're a fan of history/true crime that's based on newspapers/paper records and little else, you may find this work intriguing, but for me, it was far too dry.
I received a galley from Penguin's First to Read program in exchange for my honest review.
Well researched and well written. So many of these pop histories fizzle out at the end. Summerscale manages to weave in a connection to the modern day, and, perhaps, to our human capacity for empathy.
Meh. 2.5 stars. It is well-written and meticulously researched. Unfortunately, the main story itself appears to have very little in the way of material to research. The child murderer and his crime remain a mystery in the end and we are left with lengthy discussions of Victorian mental hospitals and specific patients having nothing really to do with the case here, the role of brass bands in the Australian army, and so on.
informative
medium-paced
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
sad
fast-paced
A lot of the book was extra details, like the temperatures they kept the jails, seeming as if the author wanted to more show all the research they had done (footnotes would have been good), instead of getting down to the story that originally sparked the book.
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
slow-paced
A really fascinating story, not just of Victorian England and crime, but also of WW1 and rural Australia in the 20th Century. Summerscale's scope and research are amazing. I wasn't expecting to tear up at this, either, but I did.