Books in the Media: Hallie Rubenhold sets the record straight

Claire Baglin’s “piercing initially unique” On the Clock (Daunt), translated by Jordan Stump, examines “the toll that backbreaking, labour-intensive, low-wage job tackles those that do it,” created Lucy Scholes at the Telegraph. The story’s storyteller has actually taken a job over the summertime at a lunch counter “and is having a hard time to adapt to being a cog in its device”. Her narrative is interleaved with her daddy, Jérôme’s, work as an electrician in a factory. “Baglin never sheds focus on the damages these jobs bring upon on normal people’s bodies: here, work is steeped in images similar to that of war,” created Scholes, adding that Baglin’s prose “magnificently equated by Jordan Stump– is as crisp as the fries fresh from the oil”. “If you’re thinking this set’s not for you, reconsider. It is just one of the paciest and most gripping items of prose I have actually run into in a while– and a lesson to us all.”

Antonia Hodgson’s The Raven Scholar (Hodderscape) was chosen in the Financial Times’ round-up of brand-new criminal activity tales by Barry Forshaw. Hodgson’s fantasy-crime cross-over is a “facility, creative (and notably substantial) whodunnit”. Forshaw added: “Hodgson is one of our finest historic crime storytellers, so you may locate it worth exploring her ingeniously developed society even if you are resistant to dream”. In an interview with Hodgson, The Bookseller called The Raven Scholar “a pleasure for any kind of hardened fantasy viewers, but additionally an access point for brand-new visitors”.

John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs (Faber), a “dazzling study of the Beatles’ music” and of the “songwriting collaboration” between John Lennon and Paul McCartney by Leslie, was picked as the publication of the week by Anthony Quinn, composing for the Viewer. She proceeded: “And it is a wonderful story, especially regarding males and kids, post-Second Globe Battle Britain, popularity, friendship and jealously, structured around the songs Paul and John wrote independently and with each other”. The Bookseller’s Sanderson said: “With all its twists and transforms, Leslie wonderfully and movingly charts their love tale, which started when they met as Liverpool teens in 1957, and finished only with Lennon’s murder in New York in 1980.”

Chronicler Rubenhold’s Tale of a Murder: The Spouses, the Mistress and Dr Crippen (Doubleday) was called a “thoughtful, humane and gripping book” by Dominic Sandbrook at the Sunday Times. In Tale of a Murder Rubenhold recasts the 1910 murder by Dr Crippen by putting the women that he killed, Charlotte Crippen and Belle Elmore, at the centre of the narrative. “No killer must ever be the guardian of their victim’s story, and yet this is the duty that Hawley Harvey Crippen has constantly held,” wrote Rubenhold. In a meeting with Rubenhold, The Bookseller’s Caroline Sanderson called Story of a Murder a “triumph”.

Historian Rubenhold’s Story of a Murder: The Spouses, the Girlfriend and Dr Crippen (Doubleday) was called a “thoughtful, gripping and gentle book” by Dominic Sandbrook at the Sunday Times. In Story of a Murder Rubenhold recasts the 1910 murder by Dr Crippen by placing the ladies that he killed, Charlotte Crippen and Belle Elmore, at the centre of the narrative.