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boba_nbooks's review against another edition
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
slow-paced
3.5
Though slow, I found this book to be quite interesting. I am a fan of true crime but don’t usually hear about crime in late 1800s London. It was intriguing to hear about how the time of the murder affected the outcome and to see the redemption arc.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Gore, Death of parent, Murder, War, and Injury/Injury detail
jhbandcats's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
informative
inspiring
mysterious
sad
medium-paced
5.0
A tale of unexpected redemption and love, The Wicked Boy shows a life begun in distress in a poor and polluted industrial area, tempered in an asylum and in war, and mellowed in the peacefulness of farm work. The author keeps the matricide in the context of late Victorian England and its ideas of adolescence, family, class, crime, and insanity.
This is the second of Kate Summerscale's books I've read, the first - The Suspicions of Mr Whicher - is as well-researched as this. She shows a boy growing up with an emotional mother, a timid younger brother, and a mostly absent seaman father. In this atmosphere of oppression, where all he wants is to escape to have adventures like those in his favorite magazines, it's not altogether surprising that 13-year-old Robert Coombes chose to kill his mother to protect his brother and have a bit of freedom. (Well, yes, it is surprising, but it makes some sense in Summerscale's telling.)
I found the post-murder sections on Broadmoor, the asylum for the criminally insane, and WWl to be the most compelling. Broadmoor taught Robert how to live among others and to learn a trade, and the war taught him to be a man. After the war. he settled in a small Australian town and worked his plot of vegetables and milked his cows. He gave neighborhood children music lessons, played the cornet in veterans' parades, and offered protection to a teenage neighbor to save him from a violent stepfather. The murder itself was appalling but the subsequent fifty-plus years are the real story.
Highly recommended for people interested in true crime and Victorian London.
This is the second of Kate Summerscale's books I've read, the first - The Suspicions of Mr Whicher - is as well-researched as this. She shows a boy growing up with an emotional mother, a timid younger brother, and a mostly absent seaman father. In this atmosphere of oppression, where all he wants is to escape to have adventures like those in his favorite magazines, it's not altogether surprising that 13-year-old Robert Coombes chose to kill his mother to protect his brother and have a bit of freedom. (Well, yes, it is surprising, but it makes some sense in Summerscale's telling.)
I found the post-murder sections on Broadmoor, the asylum for the criminally insane, and WWl to be the most compelling. Broadmoor taught Robert how to live among others and to learn a trade, and the war taught him to be a man. After the war. he settled in a small Australian town and worked his plot of vegetables and milked his cows. He gave neighborhood children music lessons, played the cornet in veterans' parades, and offered protection to a teenage neighbor to save him from a violent stepfather. The murder itself was appalling but the subsequent fifty-plus years are the real story.
Highly recommended for people interested in true crime and Victorian London.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Gore, Mental illness, Violence, Blood, Murder, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism