Book-It 'o11! Book #45
The Fifty Books Challenge, year three! (Years one and two, just in case you're curious.) This was a library request.
Title: Jack the Ripper: A Journal of the Whitechapel Murders 1888-1889 by Rick Geary
Details: Copyright 1995, Nantier Beall Minoustchine Publishing Inc
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "In this volume of his Treasury of Victorian Murder, Rick Geary explores the ghastliest and most famous murders of Victorian England. Geary has researched the subject extensively and presents, with his own inimitable tongue-in-cheek style, the Jack The Ripper mystery as told through a journal of a fascinated Englishman of the day. Both factual and darkly funny, Geary shines an ironic light on the repressive society that spawned such a monster and its hypocritical reaction to it. "
Why I Wanted to Read It: I'd enjoyed Geary's work before, charting no less than eight books of his during last year's challenge.
How I Liked It: Geary's generally excellent at a narrative voice free of gimmicks, but he employs one here and it stumbles the book considerably. The story is told by way of a journal found of "unknown British gentleman" who lived in the area at the time of the murders. Said gentleman is explained in the introduction as having contacts within the Metropolitan and City police (a handy bit of deus ex machina) that allowed him to receive information before the general public. This approach is problematic since Geary's already trying to do two generally mutually exclusive things: describe the impressions of the public of the era and consider the evidence and information of the case that we have over a hundred years later.
This bit of stretching would be forgivable if the narrative was less muddled. Unlike Geary's other books which are relatively stream-lined, this manages to be both devoid of a real hook to common narrative as well as too crowded for basic facts. His panels (and story-lines of victims) run over each other and several key victims barely merit more than a line of biography. His characters aesthetically unfortunately bear a more dotted R. Crumb look than the careful John Held Jr woodcut style that Geary would master so beautifully. The maps of which Geary is so fond are here but they're as haphazard as the rest of the book.
Given that this book describes such a well-known case (rather than, say, Madeleine Smith or Mary Rogers) it's understandable (if disappointing) that Geary would suffer such a fumble. For whatever reason, he thankfully learned his lesson and The Borden Tragedy two years later would prove to be just about everything this book wasn't.
Notable: To give his narrator a voice "of the era", Geary attempts some hyphenations ("after-noon", "off-spring") and what is a curious turn of phrase in the final page of the book.
“His [the Ripper's] victims are likewise silent in their anonymous rest.” (pg 64)
All of the Ripper victims (or victims found to be the work of Jack the Ripper) were all identified and eventually laid to rest in marked graves, and when the narrator describes the victims, they all have names and (however stilted) biographies. I'm guessing it's either a failed attempted at prose or plain sloppiness on the author's part.
Title: Jack the Ripper: A Journal of the Whitechapel Murders 1888-1889 by Rick Geary
Details: Copyright 1995, Nantier Beall Minoustchine Publishing Inc
Synopsis (By Way of Back Cover): "In this volume of his Treasury of Victorian Murder, Rick Geary explores the ghastliest and most famous murders of Victorian England. Geary has researched the subject extensively and presents, with his own inimitable tongue-in-cheek style, the Jack The Ripper mystery as told through a journal of a fascinated Englishman of the day. Both factual and darkly funny, Geary shines an ironic light on the repressive society that spawned such a monster and its hypocritical reaction to it. "
Why I Wanted to Read It: I'd enjoyed Geary's work before, charting no less than eight books of his during last year's challenge.
How I Liked It: Geary's generally excellent at a narrative voice free of gimmicks, but he employs one here and it stumbles the book considerably. The story is told by way of a journal found of "unknown British gentleman" who lived in the area at the time of the murders. Said gentleman is explained in the introduction as having contacts within the Metropolitan and City police (a handy bit of deus ex machina) that allowed him to receive information before the general public. This approach is problematic since Geary's already trying to do two generally mutually exclusive things: describe the impressions of the public of the era and consider the evidence and information of the case that we have over a hundred years later.
This bit of stretching would be forgivable if the narrative was less muddled. Unlike Geary's other books which are relatively stream-lined, this manages to be both devoid of a real hook to common narrative as well as too crowded for basic facts. His panels (and story-lines of victims) run over each other and several key victims barely merit more than a line of biography. His characters aesthetically unfortunately bear a more dotted R. Crumb look than the careful John Held Jr woodcut style that Geary would master so beautifully. The maps of which Geary is so fond are here but they're as haphazard as the rest of the book.
Given that this book describes such a well-known case (rather than, say, Madeleine Smith or Mary Rogers) it's understandable (if disappointing) that Geary would suffer such a fumble. For whatever reason, he thankfully learned his lesson and The Borden Tragedy two years later would prove to be just about everything this book wasn't.
Notable: To give his narrator a voice "of the era", Geary attempts some hyphenations ("after-noon", "off-spring") and what is a curious turn of phrase in the final page of the book.
“His [the Ripper's] victims are likewise silent in their anonymous rest.” (pg 64)
All of the Ripper victims (or victims found to be the work of Jack the Ripper) were all identified and eventually laid to rest in marked graves, and when the narrator describes the victims, they all have names and (however stilted) biographies. I'm guessing it's either a failed attempted at prose or plain sloppiness on the author's part.