By Jennie Godfrey
A girl's hunt for the Ripper
Subject
Themes
In a small Yorkshire town in the late 1970s, a twelve-year-old girl named Miv makes a wish at an old petrifying well: that she will be the one to catch the Yorkshire Ripper. Her family has been fracturing quietly for years, her mother Marian silent and periodically hospitalised since an unspoken trauma, her father Austin retreating into evenings at the pub, her Aunty Jean imposing brisk order on a household she does not quite belong to. Terrified of losing her home and her best friend Sharon to a threatened move away from Yorkshire, Miv reasons that if she can catch the killer terrorising the region, her family will have no reason to leave. With Sharon's reluctant, then wholehearted, help, she begins compiling a notebook: the List of Suspicious Things, a catalogue of neighbours, teachers, and strangers whose ordinary oddities are reinterpreted as sinister evidence.
In a small Yorkshire town in the late 1970s, a twelve-year-old girl named Miv makes a wish at an old petrifying well: that she will be the one to catch the Yorkshire Ripper. Her family has been fracturing quietly for years, her mother Marian silent and periodically hospitalised since an unspoken…
The novel is set against the real historical backdrop of the Yorkshire Ripper murders, committed by Peter Sutcliffe between 1975 and 1980 across West Yorkshire and Greater Manchester. Sutcliffe killed thirteen women and attempted to murder at least seven others before his eventual arrest in…
The List of Suspicious Things is built on a devastating irony: a child's earnest attempt to protect her community from violence becomes, almost inevitably, an engine of prejudice against the very people who have already been marked as different by the world around her. Miv's method of identifying…
Nearly every family in the novel is bound together, and simultaneously fractured, by things left unsaid. Miv's own household is defined by absence: her mother's silence, unexplained for most of the novel, her father's evasions and secret affair, and Aunty Jean's brisk management of a home she never…
Miv and Sharon's friendship anchors the novel emotionally, but it is also examined with unusual honesty for how unequal and imbalanced close childhood friendships can be. Miv repeatedly describes their bond as a seesaw, herself providing ideas and imagination while Sharon provides the social ease…
The novel traces Miv's journey from twelve to thirteen against a backdrop that repeatedly forces her to take on adult responsibilities and confront adult truths well before she is ready. From the novel's opening pages, Miv is shown parenting her own mother, coaxing her in from the cold garden,…
Loss saturates the novel long before Sharon's death becomes its defining tragedy, and the story is deeply interested in the different ways individuals and communities learn, or fail to learn, how to carry grief. Omar's ongoing mourning for Rizwana, expressed through small rituals, playing her…
Twelve, then thirteen, Miv is a watchful, quietly observant girl growing up in a Yorkshire town gripped by fear of the Yorkshire Ripper. Her real name is Mavis, spoken by her mother only once the family finally begins to heal, and the gap between that soft, old-fashioned name and the sharp, watchful…
Sharon Parker is Miv's best friend, a girl whose comfortable, middle-class home and warm mother Ruby stand in sharp contrast to the strained silence of Miv's household. Blond, pretty, and instinctively kind, Sharon is introduced through Miv's eyes as her opposite: soft curves against straight lines,…
Ishtiaq Bashir is Omar's son, a classmate of Miv and Sharon's whose two selves, the silent, withdrawn boy at school and the laughing, animated boy at home, form one of the novel's clearest illustrations of how prejudice forces people to shrink themselves for safety. When Miv and Sharon first glimpse…
Omar Bashir runs the corner shop at the heart of the community, a warm, quick-witted man whose cheerful public persona conceals private grief for his late wife Rizwana and a controlled but ever-present fear for his son Ishtiaq's safety. Having emigrated from Pakistan to Bradford, where he worked in…
Austin Senior, Miv's father, is a delivery depot supervisor whose quiet, withdrawn presence at home masks both genuine tenderness toward his daughter and a capacity for deception that troubles him throughout the novel. Married to Marian, who has fallen silent and periodically hospitalised since a…
Helen Andrews is the town's young librarian, twenty-three years old at the novel's start, whose gentle, bookish manner conceals a marriage marked by escalating domestic abuse. The daughter of Arthur, the beloved rag-and-bone man, Helen once dreamed of becoming a teacher and clearly retains the sharp…
Mike Ware is Miv's teacher at Bishopsfield High, a tall, strict, moustached man whose fearsome reputation for discipline conceals a deeply unhappy home life and a painful cycle of inherited cruelty. Miv's suspicion of him rests on newspaper descriptions of the Ripper as an angry man with a moustache…
Arthur is the town's beloved rag-and-bone man, a fixture of the community so familiar that Miv and Sharon barely register him as a distinct person until circumstances force them to look closer. Travelling the streets with his horse Mungo, greeting every child with old-fashioned courtesy, Arthur…
Aunty Jean, Austin's sister, moves into Miv's household after Marian falls silent, imposing order on a family unravelling from crisis to crisis. Introduced through her endless list-making and forthright opinions, particularly her disapproval of Margaret Thatcher and anyone she deems not respectable,…
Marian, Miv's mother, exists for most of the novel as a haunting absence rather than an active presence, a silent, hollowed-out figure sitting in an armchair or retreating to her room, periodically taken away for what the family euphemistically calls her breaks. Once a vibrant, singing woman who…
Gary Andrews, Helen's husband, is introduced as a magnetic, well-liked plumber whose charm draws admirers wherever he goes, from the young men who trail him at the Red Lion to Miv and Sharon themselves, both instantly smitten by his good looks when they meet him at Arthur's. This universal charisma…
Richard Collier is a classmate of Miv and Sharon's whose transformation from a shy, bookish junior-school boy into a menacing bully forms one of the novel's clearest studies in how violence and prejudice are learned rather than innate. Miv remembers a younger Richard who sat quietly reading beside…
Paul Ware is Mike and Hazel Ware's son, introduced as a lanky, withdrawn boy whose privileged private-school upbringing and awkward isolation make him an unlikely but persistent object of Miv's fascination throughout the novel. His parents' divorce forces him first into a strained new closeness with…
Brian is a silent young man in his twenties who lives with his mother Valerie Lockwood on Thorncliffe Road, known to Miv and Sharon for years only as the man in the coveralls, his real name and identity emerging only gradually as the girls' investigation draws closer to him. Introduced as a source…
Twelve-year-old Miv sits in her Yorkshire kitchen listening to her Aunty Jean list every grievance against the new prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, blaming her for everything from lost school milk to the murders terrorising the region. Miv recalls first hearing about the Yorkshire Ripper two years…
Miv decides she and Sharon need more information about Mr Bashir, reasoning that the Ripper is unlikely to be married since his crimes could not be hidden from a spouse. She persuades Sharon, who people always like, to ask him where he is from. He answers cheerfully that he came from Bradford but…
Mr Ware, whose first name is Mike, smokes alone in the staffroom, still furious after slamming out of his house that morning and leaving his wife Hazel weeping on the floor. Fellow teacher Caroline Stacey nervously discusses Richard Collier and Neil Callaghan's disruptive behaviour, wondering aloud…
Mike Ware has been visiting the hospital every day since Stephen's near-drowning, though the boy has long been discharged. An ill stranger smoking beside a drip remarks bitterly on being beaten by teachers in his own school days, unknowingly striking a nerve. Mike recalls his own childhood,…
Omar suspects the same racist youths who vandalise his shop were responsible for robbing Arthur at the scrapyard, having recently been shoved himself. Realising he has not seen Arthur since Doreen's death, he feels a wave of grief for his own loss of Rizwana. When the sharp-tongued vicar's wife…
Dad mentions Jim Jameson has been sleeping in his lorry, possibly after being kicked out by his wife, and suggests he park near Wilberforce Street, where Arthur lives. Miv notices Dad has begun treating her more like an adult. Visiting Arthur among his pigeons, the girls see a wedding photo of his…
Omar watches as Richard Collier and an older youth who closely resembles him walk down the street with Brian pinned between them, and when the older boy shoves Brian, Omar shouts at them to leave him alone, surprising himself. The boys mock him but leave, and Omar brings Brian into the shop,…
At church, the vicar Mr Spencer rails against the sins of the flesh and denounces Chapeltown in Leeds as a hotbed of vice, a district Miv knows is linked to several Ripper murders and attacks. She feels a flicker of connection with new choir member Paul Ware. That night she reads an old newspaper…
During Church Holiday Club, Miv notices Mr Spencer has shaved off his moustache and grows increasingly suspicious of him. Dad tells Miv, tenderly, that she has her mother's singing voice. At auditions the next day, Sharon fails to appear, and Miv discovers her secretly holding hands with Ishtiaq…
Rumours confirm the fire was arson, a petrol-soaked rag pushed through the letterbox; Ishtiaq survives with smoke inhalation and goes to stay with family in Bradford. The school reacts with shock, though Richard sniggers and is sent to the headmaster. Sharon, devastated and guilt-ridden that she…
Sharon returns to school changed and thinner, telling Miv she wants to end the list, feeling responsible for having contributed to Brian's death and wanting to focus on real relationships, including her renewed closeness with Ishtiaq, now back from Bradford. Miv is devastated but reassured when…
On Miv's thirteenth birthday, Sharon gives her lip gloss and blusher, restoring a fragile harmony between them after weeks of tension. At school, both Ishtiaq and Paul give her birthday cards, Paul's containing simply his name and a kiss, along with an invitation from Hazel to Sunday lunch. At home,…
Unable to sleep after discovering Dad's affair with Ruby, Miv resolves to finish investigating whatever remains on the list and then stop for good, regardless of whether she ever catches the Ripper. At breakfast she watches her father with new, painful clarity, barely able to speak to him, and feels…
On hearing of the accident at the mill, Omar collapses with fear for Ishtiaq before learning his son is unhurt; Jim drives him to the hospital while Helen and Arthur follow. At the hospital, Omar and Ishtiaq cling to each other, and Helen notices Miv sitting beside a pale, fragile woman stroking her…
Twelve, then thirteen, Miv is a watchful, quietly observant girl growing up in a Yorkshire town gripped by fear of the Yorkshire Ripper. Her real name is Mavis, spoken by her mother only once the family finally begins to heal, and the gap between that soft, old-fashioned name and the sharp, watchful…
Sharon Parker is Miv's best friend, a girl whose comfortable, middle-class home and warm mother Ruby stand in sharp contrast to the strained silence of Miv's household. Blond, pretty, and instinctively kind, Sharon is introduced through Miv's eyes as her opposite: soft curves against straight lines,…
Ishtiaq Bashir is Omar's son, a classmate of Miv and Sharon's whose two selves, the silent, withdrawn boy at school and the laughing, animated boy at home, form one of the novel's clearest illustrations of how prejudice forces people to shrink themselves for safety. When Miv and Sharon first glimpse…
Omar Bashir runs the corner shop at the heart of the community, a warm, quick-witted man whose cheerful public persona conceals private grief for his late wife Rizwana and a controlled but ever-present fear for his son Ishtiaq's safety. Having emigrated from Pakistan to Bradford, where he worked in…
Austin Senior, Miv's father, is a delivery depot supervisor whose quiet, withdrawn presence at home masks both genuine tenderness toward his daughter and a capacity for deception that troubles him throughout the novel. Married to Marian, who has fallen silent and periodically hospitalised since a…
Helen Andrews is the town's young librarian, twenty-three years old at the novel's start, whose gentle, bookish manner conceals a marriage marked by escalating domestic abuse. The daughter of Arthur, the beloved rag-and-bone man, Helen once dreamed of becoming a teacher and clearly retains the sharp…
Mike Ware is Miv's teacher at Bishopsfield High, a tall, strict, moustached man whose fearsome reputation for discipline conceals a deeply unhappy home life and a painful cycle of inherited cruelty. Miv's suspicion of him rests on newspaper descriptions of the Ripper as an angry man with a moustache…
Arthur is the town's beloved rag-and-bone man, a fixture of the community so familiar that Miv and Sharon barely register him as a distinct person until circumstances force them to look closer. Travelling the streets with his horse Mungo, greeting every child with old-fashioned courtesy, Arthur…
Aunty Jean, Austin's sister, moves into Miv's household after Marian falls silent, imposing order on a family unravelling from crisis to crisis. Introduced through her endless list-making and forthright opinions, particularly her disapproval of Margaret Thatcher and anyone she deems not respectable,…
Marian, Miv's mother, exists for most of the novel as a haunting absence rather than an active presence, a silent, hollowed-out figure sitting in an armchair or retreating to her room, periodically taken away for what the family euphemistically calls her breaks. Once a vibrant, singing woman who…
Gary Andrews, Helen's husband, is introduced as a magnetic, well-liked plumber whose charm draws admirers wherever he goes, from the young men who trail him at the Red Lion to Miv and Sharon themselves, both instantly smitten by his good looks when they meet him at Arthur's. This universal charisma…
Richard Collier is a classmate of Miv and Sharon's whose transformation from a shy, bookish junior-school boy into a menacing bully forms one of the novel's clearest studies in how violence and prejudice are learned rather than innate. Miv remembers a younger Richard who sat quietly reading beside…
Paul Ware is Mike and Hazel Ware's son, introduced as a lanky, withdrawn boy whose privileged private-school upbringing and awkward isolation make him an unlikely but persistent object of Miv's fascination throughout the novel. His parents' divorce forces him first into a strained new closeness with…
Brian is a silent young man in his twenties who lives with his mother Valerie Lockwood on Thorncliffe Road, known to Miv and Sharon for years only as the man in the coveralls, his real name and identity emerging only gradually as the girls' investigation draws closer to him. Introduced as a source…
By Jennie Godfrey
Subject
Themes
In a small Yorkshire town in the late 1970s, a twelve-year-old girl named Miv makes a wish at an old petrifying well: that she will be the one to catch the Yorkshire Ripper. Her family has been fracturing quietly for years, her mother Marian silent and periodically hospitalised since an unspoken trauma, her father Austin retreating into evenings at the pub, her Aunty Jean imposing brisk order on a household she does not quite belong to. Terrified of losing her home and her best friend Sharon to a threatened move away from Yorkshire, Miv reasons that if she can catch the killer terrorising the region, her family will have no reason to leave. With Sharon's reluctant, then wholehearted, help, she begins compiling a notebook: the List of Suspicious Things, a catalogue of neighbours, teachers, and strangers whose ordinary oddities are reinterpreted as sinister evidence.