The Five by Hallie Rubenhold: a review

The Five by Hallie Rubenhold

The Five by Hallie Rubenhold is one of the most powerful books I’ve read in a very long time. It tells the stories of five women, Polly Nicholls, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary-Jane Kelly. The five came from a variety of backgrounds and places, and lived varied and often painful and difficult lives, but little is known of them now, other than the manner of their death. They were the five victims of a Victorian serial killer called Jack the Ripper, and that is how history has remembered them.

In this extraordinary piece of historical research, Hallie Rubenhold has given these five women back their identities, their stories and their dignity. She follows the lives, from birth to death, of each woman, as far as it has been possible to establish it, and tells stories of temporary happiness, unbearable hardship and final tragedy.

The book is very well-written and immaculately researched. The author makes no attempt to see her subjects or their lives through rose-coloured spectacles, and the details of poverty, addiction and miserable hardship can make for very difficult reading. As a piece of social history, it is a masterpiece, but it is a very sad book.

I grew up in the East End, and knew the stories of Jack the Ripper from childhood. As a girl, learning to be aware my own safety, I came to view the story of these women differently long before this book came out, and as a history student who spent some time studying poverty and the position of women in Victorian London, I’ve always been aware that whatever their situation at the time of their murder, these women were victims not just of a serial killer but of the society they lived in. What I’d never really thought much about, is how much attention has been given to the unknown man who killed and how little to the women whose lives he cut short.

Hallie Rubenhold has done a fabulous job of giving these women back their humanity, as well as holding up a slightly uncomfortable picture of the way their deaths have been trivialised over the years. This is an excellent book, very easy to read despite its difficult subject matter. We’re no closer to knowing the identity of Jack the Ripper, and Rubenhold doesn’t care. We are, however, a lot closer to knowing his victims.

A triumph of historical research and writing.

The Jolabokaflod or Christmas Book Flood

In the run up to Christmas, and with the latest book up and running, I’ve decided to devote this blog to sharing some of my favourite books with you. Last year, on Christmas Eve, I did a post about the Christmas Book Flood, or Jolabokaflod. The concept was new to me, but I loved it.

In Iceland there is a tradition of giving books to each other on Christmas Eve and then spending the evening reading which is known as  the Jolabokaflod, or “Christmas Book Flood,” as the majority of books in Iceland are sold between September and December in preparation for Christmas giving.At this time of year, most households in Iceland receive an annual free book catalog of new publications called the Bokatidindi.  Icelanders pore over the new releases and choose which ones they want to buy.

The small Nordic island, with a population of only 329,000 people, is extraordinarily literary and people love to read and write. According to a BBC article, “The country has more writers, more books published and more books read, per head, than anywhere else in the world.  One in ten Icelanders will publish a book.”

There is more value placed on hardback and paperback books than in other parts of the world where e-books have grown in popularity.  In Iceland most people read, and the book industry is based on many people buying several books each year rather than a few people buying a lot of books.  The vast majority of books are bought at Christmas time, and that is when most books are published.

The idea of families and friends gathering together to read before the fire on Christmas Eve is a winter tradition which appeals to me.  Like the Icelanders, I love physical books although I both read and publish e-books – sometimes they are just more convenient.  Still, the Jolabokaflod would work with any kind of book.

Last year, to celebrate this fabulous tradition, I offered some of my e-books free on Christmas Eve, and the take-up was phenomenal. I like to think I found a lot of new readers on that day and I intend to do the same thing again this year. But I also wanted to do a Christmas countdown of books that I’ve read and loved; a sort of literary advent calendar which has started late. Some of them are fiction, some are non-fiction, but all of them have a particular place on my shelves, both actual and electronic. I hope that reading about some of them will cause some of you to buy them, either for yourselves or for family and friends, as part of our own Christmas Book Flood.

Merry Christmas from all of us at Blogging with Labradors.

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