I read this book for the True Crime category of Nonfiction Reader Challenge, a genre that I usually don’t gravitate to. The factual starting point was a matricide by a young boy in Victorian London. Records from Robert’s trial, his subsequent time in the Broadmoor insane asylum, and an intriguing glimpse at this later life as an emigrant to Australia raise questions in our minds about where the wickedness really rested in this case.
I appreciated that Summerscale stayed with the facts for the most part, though she did slip in a certain amount of speculation. It’s hard not to, as the historical record does not have any explanation for why this murder was actually committed. In Australia, Robert gave refuge to another boy who was suffering domestic abuse, and it’s plausible that he did so in empathy, out of his own experience. But we just can’t know what really happened, and that is frustrating. However, history is like that — we can’t know all the answers.
Summerscale rounds out the story with information about the time and place that is often quite interesting, but sometimes goes a bit far off topic – seems like stretching to fill pages. The same material, frustratingly incomplete as nonfiction, could provide rich material for a novel. A fiction writer would not need to attempt to pin down the truth, but to imaginatively create characters that could live out some of its questions.
As it is, Robert remains a distant and unapproachable figure, since we have no direct word from him about what was going on inside him during his remarkable life, through his childhood in London, his growing up in Broadmoor, his service in the Great War, and his adulthood in Australia. We will just have to wonder, and hopefully to look more carefully at the stories that are going on around us. They, too, might conceal mysteries we would do well to penetrate.
Kate Summerscale, The Wicked Boy (Penguin, 2016)
Read for the Nonfiction Reader Challenge — True Crime category
This is my final post for the Nonfiction Reader Challenge. I really enjoyed participating this year and discovered a number of books I would not have read otherwise. While I think I need a break from formal challenges next year, I hope it will inspire me to keep reading from different nonfiction genres, including those I tend to avoid. Thanks for a great challenge!
I found this book interesting more for the social history than for the crime itself, I think. It sounds like the Nonfiction Reader Challenge has been worthwhile for you – well done!
Yes, the history was interesting to learn about, though I wished the real motive for the crime could become clearer. There is so much buried in the past.
Congratulations on completing the challenge, thanks for taking part!
Thanks, I really enjoyed it.
When I read this book, I also got the idea that Robert and his brother were abused by their mother. One telling detail was the complaint about the younger brother “stealing food.” This sounds like his mother was not feeding him, or not enough. Summerscale gave quite a few hints like that, which seems to be her style (as in The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, about the Constance Kent murder case).
I think it’s a very reasonable hypothesis. It’s too bad we can’t hear from Robert about his own life, though. The times were different then, so much shame and silence around childhood trauma. Whatever the details, his story turned from tragedy into something more hopeful, and that was heartening.
How intriguing! I can see your point about this man’s life being the jumping off point for a fiction novel. I think I need to add this one to my TBR list.
The story is very intriguing, but the facts are few — Summerscale recounts them thoroughly, sometimes repeatedly, and fills them in with information about the context of the place and time. It was well done, but I could see the material really taking flight as fiction.