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A review by patsypoo
The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold
4.0
I have never annotated more than I did while reading this book and that's not something I usually do anyway.
It's clear that a lot of research was done in order to write it and there's so much to reflect upon after reading this.
I'm very glad I read it. It's a book club pick and I probably wouldn't have read it for myself otherwise. I did take a long time to finish and it felt a little dense and dry at times but I expected that.
I really appreciate all the work that went into discovering more about each of the women's life stories. It humanised them and painted a very different picture than I had prior to reading the book. All of their stories were so sad but fascinating to read.
On the other hand, I didn't think the Mary Jane chapters were as good. I understand she's the one with the most obscure past out of the 5 but there seemed to be a huge amount of speculation and inference in her chapters.In particular the sex trafficking part. We got a lot of information about what that looked like in the late 1800s but the author didn't really present any evidence to suggest that that is what happened to Mary Jane. I'm not sure we should put that much stock into Barnett's stories from what we were told about him. And even he didn't really know anything himself. I read this chapter twice too see if I'd missed something but I don't think we can conclude Mary Jane was trafficked to Paris based on the info mation the book provided.
I always knew I wasn't cut out to live in Victorian London and this book has definitely confirmed that idea. Everything was so bloody grim. The 20th and 21st centuries aren't great but, as a woman and a human, I'm definitely happier here, thank you. 🙌
It's clear that a lot of research was done in order to write it and there's so much to reflect upon after reading this.
I'm very glad I read it. It's a book club pick and I probably wouldn't have read it for myself otherwise. I did take a long time to finish and it felt a little dense and dry at times but I expected that.
I really appreciate all the work that went into discovering more about each of the women's life stories. It humanised them and painted a very different picture than I had prior to reading the book. All of their stories were so sad but fascinating to read.
On the other hand, I didn't think the Mary Jane chapters were as good. I understand she's the one with the most obscure past out of the 5 but there seemed to be a huge amount of speculation and inference in her chapters.
I always knew I wasn't cut out to live in Victorian London and this book has definitely confirmed that idea. Everything was so bloody grim. The 20th and 21st centuries aren't great but, as a woman and a human, I'm definitely happier here, thank you. 🙌