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katyl 's review for:
The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer
by Kate Summerscale
3.5 stars. The Wicked Boy held my attention & was very interesting for its central focus on a boy who kills his mother & the consequences of his action. While the background detail of time (late 19th C), place (East London) & broad context (working class family with the father away from home working for long periods) is well drawn, sometimes there was too much detail about characters who weren't directly relevant to the central tragedy.
Summerscale makes a good case for arguing that the very particular circumstances of the boy's childhood & early adolescence led him to his crime, & demonstrates clearly how, with a level of care from Broadmoor I found very surprising, he was enabled to make a good, brave, honourable life afterwards. I was rooting for him - & wished he had been spared his early experiences.
The book has a particular resonance for me as a local youngster who attended my children's school is due to go on trial for murder. It makes me ask why, more than a century on from this horror, we are seemingly so powerless, or unwilling, to intervene in the home lives of some really very desperate children to stop more tragedies being played out.
Summerscale makes a good case for arguing that the very particular circumstances of the boy's childhood & early adolescence led him to his crime, & demonstrates clearly how, with a level of care from Broadmoor I found very surprising, he was enabled to make a good, brave, honourable life afterwards. I was rooting for him - & wished he had been spared his early experiences.
The book has a particular resonance for me as a local youngster who attended my children's school is due to go on trial for murder. It makes me ask why, more than a century on from this horror, we are seemingly so powerless, or unwilling, to intervene in the home lives of some really very desperate children to stop more tragedies being played out.