People of Abandoned Character

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I didn’t know you could give a voice to those little tiny snippets of your brain that were less than perfect!? Other people thought like that? It blew my mind.” I liked the different characters we were introduced to, though I don’t think I especially warmed to any of them. I wanted to feel more for Susannah and Aisling’s relationship but I don’t think it enriched the story that much. Meanwhile, Susannah is increasingly fascinated and horrified by the murders of women taking place in Whitechapel, a district she knows all too well. When details of the Ripper's knowledge of anatomy start to surface, Susannah begins to connect the dots. A story set around the ripper but told from a female perspective who isn't a victim is refreshing. The Whitechapel Hospital is central to this book, it links the horror and poverty of this part of London to Harley Street and Chelsea in the most unexpected way.

The story is a superb edge-of-the seat thriller and a fascinating scenario of the times as the tension builds up to a slow and complicated unravelling of the truth. And just when you think it’s over… Susannah, a nurse at The London hospital, rushes into marriage with a young and wealthy surgeon Thomas Lancaster. After a passionate honeymoon, they return home to Chelsea but everything changes within their marriage. Thomas's behavior becomes increasingly volatile and violent. He stays out all night, returning home bloodied and full of secrets. The gentle and carefree man she married is just a distant memory. When the first woman is murdered in Whitechapel, Susannah's interest is piqued.... Read Full Review

Multibuys

This might lead you to imagine that People of Abandoned Character is a creepy Gothic chiller - especially if you factor in that Dr Lancaster has a Mrs Danvers-like housekeeper who makes a point of bullying his new bride. But that isn't really the feeling I got from this book. Susannah is certainly in the classic literary position of being a lone woman in peril in a large house, but she has plenty of secrets of her own and is far from a reliable narrator, as well as being capable of quite cold, self-serving behaviour. She is rightfully resentful of the limitations placed upon her simply because she's a woman, and yet at the same time her judgements of other women are often quite harsh and unsympathetic, which jarred a little with the feminist elements of the novel. That said, there were some (largely personal) irritations that jolted me out of being immersed in the tale.

Unfortunately, the second half of the book frequently dragged and the book lost its fast tempo. Also, the "twists" that the author included at the end of the book were unrealistic and contrived.On one occasion, Thomas comes home in the early hours of the morning, disheveled and covered with blood. At other times, Susannah observes Mrs. Wiggs whispering with Thomas in the hallway and washing bloodstained shirts.

Her fears, as well as the violence she’s exposed to in her own home, lead her to seek out and find her own physician, one she’d known while still a nurse. Dr. Shivershev had never seemed as taken with her husband as so many others had, and he provides a listening ear to the distraught Susannah. But even his sense of empathy has its limits. When she confides in him her fascination with the Whitechapel murders—though she does not outright accuse her husband of involvement—Dr. Shivershev asks her in return: Strong female lead, nurse marries handsome doctor who turns out to be abusive, violent and secretive. Unfortunately strong female lead turns out to be a murderer (more than one) as well. Susannah talks to Shivershev about the Ripper killings, but he fobs her off, suggesting this isn't an appropriate interest for a woman. Susannah has nowhere to turn, and continues to obsess about her abusive husband and miserable marriage - which she can't escape because of Victorian mores. I'm disappointed that I didn't enjoy this book. It should have been perfect for me but it wasn't at all what I expected. Such gruesome crimes. Why would ladies especially be so enthralled by the macabre? It seems a misguided romanticism.’Susannah is to become a nurse at London hospital, in Whitechapel. In 1888 susannah a nurse and Thomas a doctor were married in St Jude’s Whitechapel. People of Abandoned Character by Clare Whitfield. House of Zeus, 2020. ISBN 9781838932732 (hardcover), 432p. Houghton Reading Group really enjoyed this novel, set in the London of the Leather Apron - later to become renowned as the Ripper. Our protagonist is Susannah a young woman left alone in the world at the start of the book she takes control of her life before others can make any decisions for her and heads to the Whitechapel Hospital to train as a nurse. Here she meets an interesting array of characters and get to observe London's underbelly at close quarters, she also meets a dashing doctor who soon becomes her husband. But something isn't right, and Susannah soon begins to fear she has married a monster.

Set in London in the late nineteenth century, People Of Abandoned Character is an excellent debut novel. Protagonist Susannah is a 30-year old nurse who loved and married a 25-year old surgeon. Unfortunately, Susannah's happiness is short-lived. After just two weeks of marriage, Susannah's husband turns abusive. In addition, her new husband starts to disappear at night; frequently returning home covered in blood and sometimes with scratches on his face. Susannah is not an entirely reliable narrator and she’s definitely the sort of character to be labelled “unlikable” with all the baggage that comes with that descriptor. I imagine she would have been a difficult character to write, particularly in the first person, and I applaud Clare Whitfield for how consistently she wrote Susannah. This is Whitfield’s debut novel and I think she will definitely be an author to watch out for in the future! This is a warts and all depiction of what life was like in the East End of London in the late 1800s. People of Abandoned Character is a wonderfully twisty and atmospheric thriller that examines the utter fragility of a woman’s place in the world of Victorian London. It is devastating to learn how easily one could become impoverished, a ‘fallen woman’ as it were, and how difficult it would be to then forge your own freedom. Lost to the underbelly of Whitechapel, where even other women posed a threat - ready to blind or mutilate any woman they saw as competition – it is terrifying to contemplate just how futile one’s plight must be.

Games

Susannah couldn’t help but notice that when a murder occurred Thomas would be missing from the house, sometimes for days at a time. On one occasion Thomas arrived home late at night covered in blood and it was not his own. The ending was so odd and clunky. The last Ripper victim, Mary Kelly being a part of the previous killings; really? For her part, Susannah is cowed and intimated by Mrs. Wiggs, and takes to staying in her room and using her 'little drops.'