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

The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold will probably end up on my list of favorite reads this year. This is not true crime in the traditional sense; if you're looking for a detailed discussion of Jack the Ripper or his crimes, this is not that book. However, if you're interested in all things Ripper and want to know more about his victims, or you're interested in society in England during this time period or the plight of the poor, this is the book for you.

I was excited, but skeptical when I read the description of this book - how would she find enough detail to fill a book about these women who, other than being Jack the Ripper's victims, might have been an oversight to history? But I should not have doubted - Rubenhold found far more detail than I would have expected. She clearly spent a lot of time with primary source materials, including (I am guessing) things like deeds and property records.

She manages to take the small details that make up the lives of these women and spin into an interesting narrative of their lives, but more importantly manages to place them in the context of their time. She punches a huge hole in the idea that all of the Ripper's victims were prostitutes, and does a great job of showing how these 5 very different women wound up in circumstances that allowed them to become his victims. In doing so, she sheds a light on the horrendous conditions in that area of London at the time, but also delves into the challenges women of that period faced, particularly if they lost the man they relied on for support and protection.

Rubenhold really resurrects these women from history and gives them back their dignity, and makes them figures of sympathy - and does so without resorting to the salacious details of their deaths. She focuses almost exclusively on their lives, barely touching on how they died, and in doing so really makes you feel the tragedy and pain of their lives, not just their deaths.

Review: The Bees

Ok, this was an interesting one. I recently finished The Bees by Laline Paull. If I had the describe it in one sentence, this book is like a mix of The Handmaid's Tale and Watership Down (yes really), but with bees; but there is really no describing this one in one sentence.

The Bees is the story of the life of a hive, through the eyes of one bee - Flora 717, who starts the story as a sanitation worker, cleaning the hive of refuse and dead bees. Through various happenstances, Flora ends up showing us various aspects of life in the hive.

Paull has created a fully-fleshed world, with history, myth and religion to guide the lives of the bees and explain the things that happen to them and to their hive. She also creates a very hierarchical world that seems to draw on the actual biology of bees - I wish she had an afterward discussing her research for this book - but that also seems to be a commentary on inequality in our own society. Not all bees are created equal, with the sanitation workers as the lowest of the low - they can't even speak. The queen, the only one who can breed, sits at the top of the hierarchy and is venerated as a god. There are also overtones of big brother, with a "hive mind" that can guide and control the actions of all of the bees.

Flora begins to deviate from what is expected of a good bee, particularly a good sanitation worker. Will she manage to evade the fertility police, and the priestesses that control hive behavior? It really did sort of remind me of a less well-fledged Watership Down, with a group of sentient animals that have their own society and culture. It was definitely not your run of the mill book, but I enjoyed it. I think it's a great book for the right reader, but is probably not for everyone.

Review: The Firebrand

After reading Stephanie Thornton's The Conqueror's Wife: A Novel of Alexander the Great, I was really interested in reading more on ancient Greece and that area of the world. I was also really interested in giving Marion Zimmer Bradley a try, so The Firebrand seemed like a great choice. The Firebrand is the story of the fall of Troy through the eyes of Kassandra, the prophetess no one believes.

While the story was a familiar one, this was a totally different take on it. The focus was primarily on the women of the story, including Helen and Andromache, through Kassandra's eyes.  Kassandra is the sister of Hector and Paris, priestess of Apollo, and she has visions, but no one believes her warnings.

One of my favorite parts of the story was the beginning, when Kassandra goes to live with the Amazon women and spends some time as an Amazon warrior. She also meets the Kentaurs, the origins of the Centaur legend. She also spends some time in Colchis, learning snake lore, and becomes the tender of the snakes at Apollo's temple. Overall, a very interesting character.

Cassandra,
circa 1898 by Evelyn De Morgan

If you're yearning for a tale of Hector and Achilles, though, you won't find it here - they are characters in the book, but get very little "on screen" time - especially Achilles. We see them only through Kassandra's eyes and conversations with others. I rather enjoyed this, as I saw more of what the day to day life of the Trojans might have been like and the effect that the war would have on the common people, rather than the focus on the legends. However, if that isn't what you're looking for, this might not be the book for you.

This book has light fantasy elements; we see what may be - it's left up to the reader to decide - appearances by the Gods, and because Kassandra is a priestess of Apollo, we get some interesting glances in to the religion of the period. And, of course, there are Kassandra's visions. Prophecy also plays a heavy role in the story, and in Kassandra's personal life and the path that her story takes.

Overall, I highly recommend this historical fiction with a light dose of fantasy. It's a retelling of the classic Troy myth, but from a different perspective I had not seen before, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Review: Remarkable Creatures

It's been a while since I posted a review; the end of the semester has been crazy.

I recently finished Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier (better known for Girl with the Pearl Earring), and I loved it!

This is the story of Mary Anning, a female(!) fossil hunter in the early 1800s. Mary was one of the first to discover an icthyosaur specimen, and was the first to discover a plesiosaur.

Portrait of Mary Anning with her dog Tray
and the Golden Cap outcrop in the background,
Natural History Museum, London

This is all the more remarkable because she had little education and lived in a poor family; she learned fossil hunting from her father, who hunted fossils to raise money to support the family.

The story is told through the lens of Mary's friendship with Elizabeth Philpot, an upper class "spinster" who also enjoys fossil hunting. According to the book, Elizabeth plays an important role in helping Mary get the recognition she deserved from the scientific community.

Autograph letter concerning the discovery
of plesiosaurus, from Mary Anning

This book combined my interest in paleontology with my interest in interesting women, so it was a pretty easy sell for me. It lived up to my hopes; it was a really interesting look at early fossil collecting, and touched on the clash between religious beliefs and the dawning understanding of what fossils really were, and how that challenged existing beliefs. It also gave some incite into the issues women of that era, both in the lower and middle classes, faced.

I am not sure the portrayal of Mary was quite as well developed as it could have been; at times she felt a little two dimensional and the intelligence she must have possessed didn't shine through as well as I might have liked.

However, I thought it was overall an interesting look at the woman and the time period, as well as the development of paleontology. It also indirectly touched on the tension between educated experts and amateurs who develop expertise through their own explorations, which is something else that interests me. I wonder how Mary Anning would be received by the scientific community today?

Review: Netflix's Ted Bundy documentary & movie, plus book recommendations

This isn't exactly a book review per se, but it's my blog so I can write about whatever I want! I recently watched both the Conversations with a Killer, the Netflix docuseries on Ted Bundy, and the Ted Bundy film on Netflix, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile.

Still from Extremely Wicked

Both have gotten some flack from critics, especially the film, which some allege romanticizes Bundy. You can see some examples of this discussion here and here. I can understand why it comes off this way for some people; you don't really see anything of Ted's crimes until the very end, and you don't really even hear much about them - the focus is decidedly on his girlfriend Liz and his home life. If you ignore who he is, it almost looks like a romance for the first half. But, I think that's arguably the strength of the movie.

We didn't need another Ted the serial killer movie; it's been done. We didn't need more information about his crimes; it's everywhere. We didn't really need this movie either, but it added another dimension to the story. I thought it did a good job of portraying Liz as another of Ted's victims - I personally can't imagine the lasting damage to her psyche he must have done, and the film does a good job of showing this. And those moments that could be seen as romanticizing him? I personally felt they were a little chilling - looking at them with the eye of hindsight, knowing who he is and what he was doing in his time away from her - some of them felt uncomfortable and creepy, not romantic, because I couldn't help but wonder what he was thinking.


Incidentally, the film is based on Liz's book, which I actually read years ago. It was as very different perspective on a serial killer than any I have read, before or since. It's a reminder of the trauma they do to everyone around them, not just the victims. If you can get your hands on a copy, I'd recommend it. I believe I borrow mine through inter-library loan from my college library, so that may be an option.

It's also, in my opinion, a good reminder that not everyone who is dangerous is obviously dangerous. Most of what I have read about Ted Bundy indicates that this romantic version of him was who he was - most of the time - in his regular life. Yes, he sometimes had a short temper, yes he was egocentric, etc. But he was also charming. I think it's good for people to know and understand that.

The Conversations with a Killer docuseries was actually released first, and I watched it first. The documentary is made up of recordings of conversations with Bundy prior to his execution, interspersed with news coverage and interviews with others. It didn't really tell me anything I didn't already know about Bundy, but it was interesting (and chilling) to hear it in his own words. It was also interesting to hear how, in some cases, his statements were word for word what I have read in materials on psychological profiling. I knew that he was a very important part of our understanding of serial killers, but I didn't realize how much of the language profilers use (at least publicly) came word for word from his interviews.

It is again enlightening to hear such horrible things talked about so matte-of-factly and by someone who sounds so normal. He doesn't sound delusional or crazy. But, despite his efforts to talk about a hypothetical third person who isn't him, there's no escaping what he did to those women.

So, overall I think both are worth watching. I think it's important for the watcher to remember the reality of who he was, though, and not forget that the charming Ted was only one half of who he was, and the less important half at that. I think the judge at his sentencing really encapsulated this case when he talked about not only the horrors of what was done to the victims, but the waste of what Bundy could have been had he not made the choices that he did. I imagine it's a sentiment Bundy's girlfriend Liz still thinks about.

If you're still interested in Bundy after all this, I can recommend the book that I view to be the definitive discussion of him - The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule. I've mentioned it before on this blog, because it really is a master example of the genre. Rule, who like Liz actually knew Bundy before he was arrested, really delves into the psychology of Ted as well as his crimes. Well worth a read if you're interested in Bundy specifically or serial killers more generally.

Review: The Romanovs: 1613-1918

The Romanovs: 1613-1918 by Simon Sebag Montefiore was a big undertaking; a shared biography of the whole dynasty and 300 years of history. I think Montefiore achieved it with varying levels of success.

Each chapter, or "scene," starts with a cast of characters, which is helpful in keeping track of who everyone is, but this is still challenging (through no fault of the author), given the propensity to repeat names throughout the dynasty and the inevitable overlap of the names of courtiers as well.

Michael I of Russia,
the first tsar of the Romanov-Dynasty
(1613 - 1645). By Johann Heinrich Wedekind

Each "scene" essentially covers one generation of Romanovs, starting with the rise of the first Romanov after the "time of troubles." This is where the variability comes in - some of the chapters, at least for me, were much more engaging and interesting than others. It makes sense that some would be more detailed than others based on what is actually available in the historical record, and that some rulers would be more interesting than others based on what they themselves did, but I felt the writing quality varied from chapter to chapter as well. At times the writing style was very abrupt; it felt like we changed from point to point within the same paragraph, and it was a little jarring and made it harder to keep track of what was going on.

All told, though, this was an interesting book, particularly the chapters on the more famous Romanovs like Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, and gave me some insight into the earlier members of the family I knew nothing about. It also covered a range of information about each figure, from how they came to the throne, their military exploits and their romantic relationships. (It turns out some of the Romanov love letters would put modern sexting to shame!)

Peter the Great by
Paul Delaroche

Montefiore includes discussions of the political intrigue and courtiers around each Romanov, as well as analysis of their strength and weaknesses and familial relationships. His discussion of the modernization of Russia under Peter the Great was, for me, particularly interesting, as was his discussion of the rise of Catherine I (distinguished from the more well known Catherine the Great), who began life as a servant and eventually became the second wife of Peter the Great and briefly ruled following his death. Talk about rags to riches.

Nicholas II

And, of course, a significant chunk of the end of the book is devoted to the rule of Nicholas II (Nicky) and the fall of the Romanovs. His discussion was more in depth than some other accounts I have read, although I have yet to dig into the biographies by Robert Massie or Helen Rappaport. In particular I found his analysis of the relationship between Nicholas and his wife Alexandra (Alicky), with the added dynamics of their son Alexei's hemophilia and the power this gave to the mystic Rasputin to be particularly interesting and enlightening. The reader cannot help but wonder how things might have been different if Alexei was healthy. Montefiore clearly places blame on Alexandra for the fall of the regime, although just as clearly shows how Nicholas himself also shared responsibility, as well as the ways the generations leading up to him set the stage for what was to come.

Overall, a good primer on the history of the Romanovs which definitely piqued my interest in some specific figures in Russian history. It helps understand the peak of Romanov power, followed by the steady decline, and shows the socio-economic context of how the system of serfdom really set the country up for turmoil, but also addresses how it might have been avoided or lessened. While the writing style at times made it a slog, overall I can recommend to anyone interested in the Romanovs of Russian history.

What am I reading now?

• The Agony & The Ecstasy by Irving Stone
• The Bees by Laline Paull
• Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier 
• The Firebrand by Marion Zimmer Bradley