Tag: 5-stars

Review: The Dictionary of Lost Words, Pip Williams

Posted on by Dana
Review: The Dictionary of Lost Words, Pip WilliamsThe Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams
Published by Ballantine Books on March 31, 2020
Genres: Historical Fiction
Pages: 400
Format: E-Book, eBook
Source: Library
Buy on Amazon, Buy on Bookshop

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Goodreads
five-stars

In this remarkable debut based on actual events, as a team of male scholars compiles the first Oxford English Dictionary, one of their daughters decides to collect the "objectionable" words they omit.

Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the "Scriptorium," a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Young Esme's place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word "bondmaid" flutters to the floor. She rescues the slip, and when she learns that the word means slave-girl, she withholds it from the OED and begins to collect other words that have been discarded or neglected by the dictionary men.

As she grows up, Esme realizes that words and meanings relating to women's and common folks' experiences often go unrecorded. And so she begins in earnest to search out words for her own dictionary: The Dictionary of Lost Words. To do so she must leave the sheltered world of the university and venture out to meet the people whose words will fill those pages.

Set during the height of the women's suffrage movement with the Great War looming, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men.
Based on actual events and combed from author Pip Williams's experience delving into the archives of the Oxford English Dictionary, this highly original novel is a delightful, lyrical, and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words and the power of language to shape the world.

This book was one of the most enjoyable I’ve read all year, and I highly recommend it to fans of historical fiction who also love words. I picked it up upon seeing Simon Winchester’s blurb:

“In the annals of lexicography, no more imaginative, delightful, charming, and clever book has yet been written.” —Simon Winchester, author of The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary

High praise, considering The Professor and the Madman was one of the more interesting and enjoyable works of nonfiction I’ve read.

Some reviewers mention that this book takes a turn when characters start dying, but honestly, that’s what happens in life: as you age, you lose your parents and friends. It would be unnatural for Williams not to include this aspect of Esme’s story.

The novel was well written on top of telling an engaging story. I loved the characters’ meditations on words, and I enjoyed Esme’s efforts to collect words she feared the dictionary was not capturing.

In an interview in the back of the book, Williams said,

By the time I had finished the first draft of this novel, I had become acutely aware that the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was a flawed and gendered text. But it was also extraordinary, and far less flawed and gendered than it might have been in the hands of someone other than James Murray.

Williams’s admiration for Murray’s efforts to bring the dictionary to completion was palpable on every page, but even more than that, her admiration for the lesser-known individuals who contributed to the dictionary was spotlighted.

five-stars

Related posts:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2
2018 Reading Challenges: Part One
Review: A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle

Review: Beautiful Country: A Memoir, Qian Julie Wang

Posted on by Dana
Review: Beautiful Country: A Memoir, Qian Julie WangBeautiful Country: A Memoir by Qian Julie Wang
Narrator: Qian Julie Wang
Published by Random House Audio on September 7, 2021
Genres: Biography, Memoir
Length: 9 hours, 38 minutes
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Source: Library
Buy on Amazon, Buy on Bookshop

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Goodreads
five-stars

An incandescent memoir from an astonishing new talent, Beautiful Country puts listeners in the shoes of an undocumented child living in poverty in the richest country in the world.
"Extraordinary.... Consider this remarkable memoir a new classic." (Publishers Weekly, starred review)

In Chinese, the word for America, Mei Guo, translates directly to “beautiful country”. Yet when seven-year-old Qian arrives in New York City in 1994 full of curiosity, she is overwhelmed by crushing fear and scarcity. In China, Qian’s parents were professors; in America, her family is “illegal”, and it will require all the determination and small joys they can muster to survive.
In Chinatown, Qian’s parents labor in sweatshops. Instead of laughing at her jokes, they fight constantly, taking out the stress of their new life on one another. Shunned by her classmates and teachers for her limited English, Qian takes refuge in the library and masters the language through books, coming to think of The Berenstain Bears as her first American friends. And where there is delight to be found, Qian relishes it: her first bite of gloriously greasy pizza, weekly “shopping days”, when Qian finds small treasures in the trash lining Brooklyn’s streets, and a magical Christmas visit to Rockefeller Center—confirmation that the New York City she saw in movies does exist after all.

But then Qian’s headstrong Ma Ma collapses, revealing an illness that she has kept secret for months for fear of the cost and scrutiny of a doctor’s visit. As Ba Ba retreats further inward, Qian has little to hold onto beyond his constant refrain: Whatever happens, say that you were born here, that you’ve always lived here.

Inhabiting her childhood perspective with exquisite lyric clarity and unforgettable charm and strength, Qian Julie Wang has penned an essential American story about a family fracturing under the weight of invisibility, and a girl coming of age in the shadows, who never stops seeking the light.

This is a fantastic memoir that should be required reading for anyone who teaches. What struck me most about the memoir was how clueless Qian’s teachers were about what she was going through at home and how little they believed in her. Today, she is a managing partner in a law firm, Gottlieb & Wang. She had been told she’d never be a lawyer or attend a prestigious college. She was accused of not doing her own work because her teachers could not believe she was capable. These experiences, in addition to the trauma she experienced at home and working alongside her mother in a sweatshop, underscore the notion that we never really know what others have experienced or what they might be going through—we should be understanding, kind, and patient. Qian Julie Wang’s story is remarkable, perhaps even more so because it’s the story of so many children living in the United States.

five-stars

Related posts:

The Odyssey, Homer, Narrated by Ian McKellen
Review: The Year of Lear, James Shapiro
Review: House of the Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne

Review: Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, Michael Sandel

Posted on by Dana
Review: Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, Michael SandelJustice: What's the Right Thing to Do? by Michael J. Sandel
Published by Farrar Straus and Giroux Genres: Nonfiction
Pages: 308
Format: Paperback
Source: Library
Buy on Amazon, Buy on Bookshop

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Goodreads
five-stars

"For Michael Sandel, justice is not a spectator sport," The Nation's reviewer of Justice remarked. In his acclaimed book―based on his legendary Harvard course―Sandel offers a rare education in thinking through the complicated issues and controversies we face in public life today. It has emerged as a most lucid and engaging guide for those who yearn for a more robust and thoughtful public discourse. "In terms we can all understand," wrote Jonathan Rauch in The New York Times, Justice "confronts us with the concepts that lurk . . . beneath our conflicts."

Affirmative action, same-sex marriage, physician-assisted suicide, abortion, national service, the moral limits of markets―Sandel relates the big questions of political philosophy to the most vexing issues of the day, and shows how a surer grasp of philosophy can help us make sense of politics, morality, and our own convictions as well.

Justice is lively, thought-provoking, and wise―an essential new addition to the small shelf of books that speak convincingly to the hard questions of our civic life.

I co-teach a course on Social Justice in Literature and History, and my teaching partner and I have used parts of Sandel’s philosophy as a framework for the course for the last three years; however, I had not yet read the entirety of Sandel’s book until now. Sandel breaks down complicated topics remarkably well, as you can see in this book and the lectures available online. He injects occasional humor into the book, but there’s no mistaking the book’s seriousness of purpose. It makes an excellent companion to Michael Schur’s How to Be Perfect. In fact, I’ve wondered several times if Michael Sandel’s book inspired Schur. There is a little more humor in Schur’s book, which readers might expect coming from a comedy author, and Schur deals with different philosophical issues (such as what do you do with the art of horrible people?). However, the books undeniably overlap in many respects.

An important note: Sandel’s lectures are fun to watch and retread a lot of the ground covered in the book. Some of the book comes verbatim from his lecture notes. However, audience participation makes the lectures entertaining to watch, and the course also comes with suggested readings. I highly recommend checking it out. It’s rather remarkable that anyone with an internet connection can take a popular Harvard course for free.

five-stars

Related posts:

Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Yellow Face, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Bless Me, Ultima, Rudolfo Anaya
The Three Weissmanns of Westport

Review: How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question, Michael Schur

Posted on by Dana
Review: How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question, Michael SchurHow to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur
Narrator: Michael Schur, Kristen Bell, D'Arcy Carden, Ted Danson, William Jackson Harper, Manny Jacinto, Marc Evan Jackson, Jameela Jamil, Todd May
Published by Simon Schuster Audio on January 25, 2022
Genres: Nonfiction
Length: 9 hours 13 minutes
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Source: Library
Buy on Amazon, Buy on Bookshop

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Goodreads
five-stars

From the creator of The Good Place and the co-creator of Parks and Recreation, a hilarious, thought-provoking guide to living an ethical life, drawing on 2,500 years of deep thinking from around the world.

Most people think of themselves as “good,” but it’s not always easy to determine what’s “good” or “bad”—especially in a world filled with complicated choices and pitfalls and booby traps and bad advice. Fortunately, many smart philosophers have been pondering this conundrum for millennia and they have guidance for us. With bright wit and deep insight, How to Be Perfect explains concepts like deontology, utilitarianism, existentialism, ubuntu, and more so we can sound cool at parties and become better people.

Schur starts off with easy ethical questions like “Should I punch my friend in the face for no reason?” (No.) and works his way up to the most complex moral issues we all face. Such as: Can I still enjoy great art if it was created by terrible people? How much money should I give to charity? Why bother being good at all when there are no consequences for being bad? And much more. By the time the book is done, we’ll know exactly how to act in every conceivable situation, so as to produce a verifiably maximal amount of moral good. We will be perfect, and all our friends will be jealous. OK, not quite. Instead, we’ll gain fresh, funny, inspiring wisdom on the toughest issues we face every day.

This book is both fun and thought-provoking. I am reading it alongside Michael Sandel’s Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?, and I find they cover the same ground (for the most part). Both books unpack complicated philosophy in ways that are easy to understand. Schur’s book is also funny as well, and the audiobook provides a really fun Easter egg that I won’t spoil. What I think Schur does very well in this book is apply philosophy to modern questions, and sometimes, there are no good answers. Ultimately, my conclusion is that we should think about these issues, and to paraphrase John Oliver, quoted in this book, it may be hard to draw the line between good and bad, but we have to draw it somewhere.

five-stars

Related posts:

Review: A Loaded Gun: Emily Dickinson for the 21st Century, Jerome Charyn
Review: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer
Review: Alias Grace, Margaret Atwood

Review: Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner

Posted on by Dana
Review: Crying in H Mart, Michelle ZaunerCrying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
Narrator: Michelle Zauner
Published by Random House Audio on April 20, 2021
Genres: Biography, Memoir
Pages: -2
Length: 7 hours, 23 minutes
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Source: Audible
Buy on Amazon, Buy on Bookshop

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Goodreads
five-stars

From the indie rockstar of Japanese Breakfast fame, and author of the viral 2018 New Yorker essay that shares the title of this book, an unflinching, powerful memoir about growing up Korean American, losing her mother, and forging her own identity.

In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up the only Asian American kid at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.

As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band—and meeting the man who would become her husband—her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal pancreatic cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.

Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.

This memoir lives up to all the hype I’ve heard about it. It’s a moving portrait of a mother-daughter relationship. The book grew from Zauner’s award-winning essay, “Love, Loss, and Kimchi,” for Glamour magazine. Zauner narrates the audiobook.

I was incredibly moved by Zauner’s descriptions of caring for her mother during her illness and trying to connect with her mother after she died by watching YouTube videos to learn to cook the foods her mother hadn’t had time to teach her. Zauner describes how her mother’s friend made jatjuk when her mother couldn’t eat most foods because of the sores in her mouth. Jatjuk, Zauner explains, is often prepared for sick people. After her mother’s death, she wanted jatjuk, but she didn’t know how to make it, so she sought a recipe on Korean YouTube cook Maangchi’s channel. I’m embedding a video of her making jatjuk below, but I think it is a newer version than the one Zauner watched.

I teared up a bit listening to this part of the book because I, too, have learned cooking skills I had struggled to learn through watching the YouTube videos of Helen Rennie. In particular, after years of trying to learn pie crust, I watched this video in which Helen walks through some tips and tricks, and I finally, finally made a good pie crust.

I love these kinds of memoirs that combine a love of food and culture with a family history. I highly recommend this book, and I’m glad I (finally) read it.

five-stars

Related posts:

Review: The Final Revival of Opal & Nev, Dawnie Walton
Adam & Eve, Sena Jeter Naslund
Eclipse

Review: Tastes Like War, Grace M. Cho

Posted on by Dana
Review: Tastes Like War, Grace M. ChoTastes Like War by Grace M. Cho
Narrator: Cindy Kay
Published by Dreamscape Media on August 3, 2021
Genres: Biography, Memoir, Nonfiction
Length: 9 hours 25 minutes
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Source: Library
Buy on Amazon, Buy on Bookshop

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Goodreads
five-stars

Grace M. Cho grew up as the daughter of a white American merchant marine and the Korean bar hostess he met abroad. They were one of few immigrants in a xenophobic small town during the Cold War, where identity was politicized by everyday details—language, cultural references, memories, and food. When Grace was fifteen, her dynamic mother experienced the onset of schizophrenia, a condition that would continue and evolve for the rest of her life.

Part food memoir, part sociological investigation, Tastes Like War is a hybrid text about a daughter’s search through intimate and global history for the roots of her mother’s schizophrenia. In her mother’s final years, Grace learned to cook dishes from her parent’s childhood in order to invite the past into the present, and to hold space for her mother’s multiple voices at the table. And through careful listening over these shared meals, Grace discovered not only the things that broke the brilliant, complicated woman who raised her—but also the things that kept her alive.

I found this memoir/biography moving and well-written. I learned a great deal that I did not know about schizophrenia and also about the Korean War and its aftermath. It was fascinating to see how Cho weaved together her interest in food, especially learning to cook Korean food and becoming a baker, with her mother’s story. One of the most compelling parts of the book comes near the end when we learn how much Grace’s mother loved cheeseburgers—the book’s last line is a gut punch. There is also an extended section about how Grace’s mother foraged for mushrooms and blackberries, which turned into a savvy business. There is much to appreciate in this beautiful memoir, but its heart is Cho’s attempts to understand her mother.

I checked this out after it was featured on the main page of my library’s Overdrive website as part of the Big Library Read. As such, there was no waiting list, and unlimited copies were available for checkout. I don’t think that’s still the case, but I highly recommend checking it out, and the audiobook is superbly narrated by Cindy Kay.

Note: I am aware that Cho’s brother and his family dispute the veracity of this memoir. If you are interested in their side of the story, you can find it displayed prominently on Goodreads. I am also aware that the family members frequently respond to reviews, tweets, etc. about this book and will not get in the middle of a family dispute.

five-stars

Related posts:

Insurgent, Veronica Roth
Coming Up for Air
Review: March: Book Three, John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell

May Reading Update

Posted on by Dana

I finished several books, and with the busy end-of-school-year, I haven’t had a chance to share my thoughts about them.

May Reading UpdateDust Child by Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
Narrator: Quyen Ngo
Published by Algonquin Books on March 14, 2023
Genres: Historical Fiction
Length: 12 hours 28 minutes
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Source: Library
Buy on Amazon, Buy on Bookshop

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Goodreads
five-stars

From the internationally bestselling author of The Mountains Sing, a suspenseful and moving saga about family secrets, hidden trauma, and the overriding power of forgiveness, set during the war and in present-day Việt Nam.

In 1969, sisters Trang and Quỳnh, desperate to help their parents pay off debts, leave their rural village and become “bar girls” in Sài Gòn, drinking, flirting (and more) with American GIs in return for money. As the war moves closer to the city, the once-innocent Trang gets swept up in an irresistible romance with a young and charming American helicopter pilot, Dan. Decades later, Dan returns to Việt Nam with his wife, Linda, hoping to find a way to heal from his PTSD and, unbeknownst to her, reckon with secrets from his past.

At the same time, Phong—the son of a Black American soldier and a Vietnamese woman—embarks on a search to find both his parents and a way out of Việt Nam. Abandoned in front of an orphanage, Phong grew up being called “the dust of life,” “Black American imperialist,” and “child of the enemy,” and he dreams of a better life for himself and his family in the U.S.

Past and present converge as these characters come together to confront decisions made during a time of war—decisions that force them to look deep within and find common ground across race, generation, culture, and language. Suspenseful, poetic, and perfect for readers of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko or Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing, Dust Child tells an unforgettable and immersive story of how those who inherited tragedy can redefine their destinies through love, hard-earned wisdom, compassion, courage, and joy.

I really enjoyed The Mountains Sing, so I felt I’d enjoy Dust Child, and I was not wrong. I am not sure that comparisons to Homegoing and Pachinko are fair, as those books are more family epics. I figured out the connection among the different characters, but I wished for more closure on one loose end—I suppose lack of closure is realistic, however. I was interested to learn that this novel came from the author’s dissertation research.

May Reading UpdateThe Witch's Daughter (The Witch's Daughter, #1) by Paula Brackston
Published by St. Martin's Griffin on December 1, 2008
Genres: Fantasy/Science Fiction, Historical Fiction
Pages: 387
Format: E-Book, eBook
Source: Library
Buy on Amazon, Buy on Bookshop

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Goodreads
four-stars

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

An enthralling tale of modern witch Bess Hawksmith, a fiercely independent woman desperate to escape her cursed history who must confront the evil which has haunted her for centuries

My name is Elizabeth Anne Hawksmith, and my age is three hundred and eighty-four years. If you will listen, I will tell you a tale of witches. A tale of magic and love and loss. A story of how simple ignorance breeds fear, and how deadly that fear can be. Let me tell you what it means to be a witch.

In the spring of 1628, the Witchfinder of Wessex finds himself a true Witch. As Bess Hawksmith watches her mother swing from the Hanging Tree she knows that only one man can save her from the same fate: the Warlock Gideon Masters. Secluded at his cottage, Gideon instructs Bess, awakening formidable powers she didn't know she had. She couldn't have foreseen that even now, centuries later, he would be hunting her across time, determined to claim payment for saving her life.

In present-day England, Elizabeth has built a quiet life. She has spent the centuries in solitude, moving from place to place, surviving plagues, wars, and the heartbreak that comes with immortality. Her loneliness comes to an abrupt end when she is befriended by a teenage girl called Tegan. Against her better judgment, Elizabeth opens her heart to Tegan and begins teaching her the ways of the Hedge Witch. But will she be able to stand against Gideon—who will stop at nothing to reclaim her soul—in order to protect the girl who has become the daughter she never had?

I don’t understand the hate this one is getting on Goodreads. I put off reading it for something like a decade due to the low ratings! It’s actually pretty good. Parts of it are over the top, but the historical fiction aspects were well-researched and convincing, and I love a good story about someone who has lived through centuries of history. To me, that was the best part of Anne Rice’s books. I would read more of this author’s books for sure.

May Reading UpdateTime's Undoing by Cheryl A. Head
Published by Dutton on March 7, 2023
Genres: Contemporary Fiction, Historical Fiction
Pages: 352
Format: E-Book, eBook
Source: Library
Buy on Amazon, Buy on Bookshop

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Goodreads
four-stars

A searing and tender novel about a young Black journalist’s search for answers in the unsolved murder of her great-grandfather in segregated Birmingham, Alabama, decades ago—inspired by the author’s own family history

Birmingham, 1929: Robert Lee Harrington, a master carpenter, has just moved to Alabama to pursue a job opportunity, bringing along his pregnant wife and young daughter. Birmingham is in its heyday, known as the “Magic City” for its booming steel industry, and while Robert and his family find much to enjoy in the city’s busy markets and vibrant nightlife, it’s also a stronghold for the Klan. And with his beautiful, light-skinned wife and snazzy car, Robert begins to worry that he might be drawing the wrong kind of attention.

2019: Meghan McKenzie, the youngest reporter at the Detroit Free Press, has grown up hearing family lore about her great-grandfather’s murder—but no one knows the full story of what really happened back then, and his body was never found. Determined to find answers to her family’s long-buried tragedy and spurred by the urgency of the Black Lives Matter movement, Meghan travels to Birmingham. But as her investigation begins to uncover dark secrets that spider across both the city and time, her life may be in danger.

Inspired by true events, Time’s Undoing is both a passionate tale of one woman’s quest for the truth behind the racially motivated trauma that has haunted her family for generations and, as newfound friends and supporters in Birmingham rally around Meghan’s search, the uplifting story of a community coming together to fight for change.

This was a pretty good mystery. I liked the parts set in the present more; I think the author has a better feel for the present than the past. I thought the author handled the depiction of White allies with problematic families well. The book captures the setting extremely well; I feel certain the author has done a great deal of research.

 

Related posts:

Review: Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison
Review: The Hearts We Sold, Emily Lloyd-Jones
Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Speckled Band, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Review: Longbourn, Jo Baker

Posted on by Dana
Review: Longbourn, Jo BakerLongbourn by Jo Baker
Published by Alfred A. Knopf on October 8, 2013
Genres: Historical Fiction
Pages: 352
Format: E-Book, eBook
Buy on Amazon, Buy on Bookshop

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Goodreads
five-stars

• Pride and Prejudice was only half the story • If Elizabeth Bennet had the washing of her own petticoats, Sarah often thought, she’d most likely be a sight more careful with them. In this irresistibly imagined belowstairs answer to Pride and Prejudice, the servants take center stage. Sarah, the orphaned housemaid, spends her days scrubbing the laundry, polishing the floors, and emptying the chamber pots for the Bennet household. But there is just as much romance, heartbreak, and intrigue downstairs at Longbourn as there is upstairs. When a mysterious new footman arrives, the orderly realm of the servants’ hall threatens to be completely, perhaps irrevocably, upended.

Jo Baker dares to take us beyond the drawing rooms of Jane Austen’s classic—into the often overlooked domain of the stern housekeeper and the starry-eyed kitchen maid, into the gritty daily particulars faced by the lower classes in Regency England during the Napoleonic Wars—and, in doing so, creates a vivid, fascinating, fully realized world that is wholly her own.

I just loved this book. It’s hard for me to believe a retelling of Pride and Prejudice could be better than this. The lives of the servants, some of whom rate barely a mention, are fully realized in Jo Baker’s Longbourn. Mrs. Hill’s backstory is fascinating (and entirely believable, based on what we know of Mr. Bennet); she is mentioned only a handful of times in Austen’s novel. Sarah is mentioned only once in Pride and Prejudice, and the others are never mentioned by name.

I liked seeing Mr. Collins get a more sympathetic portrayal—he’s much kinder to the servants than some of the Bennets themselves. Jo Baker’s Wickham is odious—this story puts his elopement with Lydia in an entirely new and disturbing light. I appreciated Baker’s empathy for Mrs. Bennet. In her hands, Elizabeth Bennet is imperfect and a bit thoughtless.

In addition, Baker captures the setting well. Longbourn and Pemberley are drawn in vivid relief from the vantage point of the kitchens, servants’ quarters, and stables. There are some beautiful descriptive passages of the scenery, particularly near the end of the novel.

Austen doesn’t say much about the Napoleonic Wars; many critics have pondered the oversight. Baker makes them a central part of one character’s story. I also appreciated the way the book didn’t shy away from issues of race and class. It’s clear from the context that Mr. Bingley has earned his money somehow as part of the slave trade, and his former slave Ptolemy Bingley is a brilliant character.

I highly recommend this book to fans of Jane Austen, but even if you read Jane Austen and felt like something was missing, this book might be what you’re looking for.

five-stars

Related posts:

Sunday Salon: The Shelf Awareness Interview
Review: Where She Went, Gayle Forman
The Tempest, William Shakespeare

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

Posted on by Dana
Review: The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper, Hallie RubenholdThe Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold
Narrator: Louise Brealey
Published by Highbridge on October 8, 2019
Genres: Biography, History, Nonfiction
Length: 10 hours 19 minutes
Format: Audio, Audiobook
Source: Audible
Buy on Amazon, Buy on Bookshop

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale.

Goodreads
five-stars

Five devastating human stories and a dark and moving portrait of Victorian London—the untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper.

Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine, and Mary-Jane are famous for the same thing, though they never met. They came from Fleet Street, Knightsbridge, Wolverhampton, Sweden, and Wales. They wrote ballads, ran coffee houses, lived on country estates; they breathed ink-dust from printing presses and escaped people-traffickers. What they had in common was the year of their murders: 1888. The person responsible was never identified, but the character created by the press to fill that gap has become far more famous than any of these five women.

For more than a century, newspapers have been keen to tell us that "the Ripper" preyed on prostitutes. Not only is this untrue, as historian Hallie Rubenhold has discovered, but it has prevented the real stories of these fascinating women from being told. Now, in this devastating narrative of five lives, Rubenhold finally sets the record straight, revealing a world not just of Dickens and Queen Victoria, but of poverty, homelessness, and rampant misogyny. They died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time—but their greatest misfortune was to be born a woman.

This book was very moving. I cried twice: while listening to the Introduction and while listening to the Conclusion/A Life in Objects. What I particularly appreciated about this book is that it focused on what is known about the five canonical victims of Jack the Ripper and not what he did to them. The book also did not focus at all on the killer himself. I appreciated this fresh approach. One problem I have with true crime as a genre is the way it can be overly glib about horrific crimes; people forget that real people were at the center of these crimes. Hallie Rubenhold handled the story of each woman gracefully. She has done a wealth of research into these women’s lives. The great tragedy that seemed to be at the heart of most of their stories was that they were poor and struggled with alcoholism. Rubenhold argues that the women have been dismissed as sex workers, the implication being that perhaps the world was better off after they were killed. However, not only is it untrue that they were all sex workers—as though that even means they deserved what happened to them, which Rubenhold also dismisses—but she also emphasizes their relationships with family members, loved ones, and friends. This book was a refreshing biography and should be the model for other books about famous crimes. It’s a shame that we, as a people, are more fascinated by a psychopathic misogynist than the women he killed.

five-stars

Related posts:

Sunday Post #12: Bossypants
Review: A True Account: Hannah Masury’s Sojourn Amongst the Pyrates, Written by Herself, Katherine H...
Three Books from My Old TBR Pile and One New Book