{"id":5301,"date":"2026-01-04T06:14:42","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T06:14:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=5301"},"modified":"2026-01-04T06:14:42","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T06:14:42","slug":"the-list-of-suspicious-things-by-jennie-godfrey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=5301","title":{"rendered":"The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jennie Godfrey\u2019s debut novel arrives like a gut punch wrapped in the comforting warmth of Yorkshire tea and chip butties. Set against the backdrop of Peter Sutcliffe\u2019s reign of terror, The List of Suspicious Things<\/em> transforms a historical nightmare into an unexpectedly tender meditation on friendship, loss, and the peculiar resilience of childhood.<\/p>\n

A Yorkshire Childhood Under Siege<\/h2>\n

The year is 1979, and twelve-year-old Miv\u2019s world is crumbling on multiple fronts. Margaret Thatcher has just become Prime Minister\u2014a development her opinionated Aunty Jean declares \u201cthe beginning of the end for Yorkshire.\u201d But there\u2019s a more sinister darkness creeping through the streets: the Yorkshire Ripper has turned everyday life into a landscape of fear, where women clutch their house keys between their fingers and parents keep their daughters close after dark.<\/p>\n

Godfrey captures this atmospheric dread with remarkable restraint. The fear doesn\u2019t announce itself through overwrought prose; instead, it seeps into the mundane details of Miv\u2019s life\u2014the warnings whispered at school gates, the hurried walks home before darkness falls, the newspaper headlines that seem to multiply with each passing week. This is historical fiction that trusts its readers to understand the weight of what\u2019s unsaid.<\/p>\n

When Miv\u2019s family threatens to leave Yorkshire for a fresh start, she hatches a desperate plan with her best friend Sharon: they\u2019ll catch the Ripper themselves. Armed with a spiral notebook and twelve-year-old logic, the girls begin their \u201cList of Suspicious Things,\u201d cataloging neighbors, teachers, and anyone whose behavior seems even slightly off. It\u2019s equal parts Nancy Drew and Lord of the Flies\u2014innocent detective work that gradually reveals the darker complexities of adult life.<\/p>\n

The Architecture of Memory<\/h2>\n

Godfrey\u2019s greatest achievement lies in her portrayal of Miv\u2019s narrative voice. She sounds authentically twelve\u2014observant and naive in equal measure, capable of profound insight one moment and childish misunderstanding the next. When Miv describes her street as resembling \u201crows of battle-weary grey soldiers,\u201d you feel both the poetry of her bookish imagination and her desperate attempt to make sense of decay she\u2019s too young to fully comprehend.<\/p>\n

The Yorkshire dialect threads through the narrative like the warp and weft of the region\u2019s famous textiles\u2014\u201dlaik,\u201d \u201csnicket,\u201d \u201cey up\u201d\u2014grounding us firmly in God\u2019s Own Country. Yet Godfrey never lets it become performative. The language feels lived-in, authentic to how people actually spoke, not how outsiders imagine they did.<\/p>\n

The author\u2019s background as the first in her mill-working family to attend university infuses the novel with genuine understanding of class dynamics in 1970s Yorkshire. The contrast between Miv\u2019s cramped terraced house with its \u201cchipped yellow Formica top\u201d and Sharon\u2019s home with \u201cheavily lined velvet curtains\u201d speaks volumes without ever feeling didactic. These aren\u2019t just scenic details; they\u2019re the architecture of social division that even children absorb.<\/p>\n

The Heart That Breaks: Friendship and Loss<\/h2>\n

At its core, The List of Suspicious Things<\/em> chronicles the friendship between Miv and Sharon with devastating precision. Sharon is \u201call curves and waves\u201d to Miv\u2019s \u201cstraight lines,\u201d the sunny counterpoint to Miv\u2019s darker worldview. Their bond feels achingly real\u2014the kind of childhood friendship that seems eternal until adulthood proves otherwise.<\/p>\n

When tragedy strikes, Godfrey refuses to soften the blow. Sharon\u2019s death comes not from the Ripper they\u2019ve been hunting, but from local boy Reece Carlton\u2014a brutal reminder that monsters aren\u2019t always strangers lurking in shadows. The aftermath is rendered with unflinching honesty, showing grief not as a linear journey but as something that lives in the body, that changes how you move through the world.<\/p>\n

What elevates this beyond mere tragedy is Godfrey\u2019s exploration of complicity and guilt. Miv must reckon with how their detective game may have contributed to the violence, how playing at catching a killer has real-world consequences. It\u2019s a coming-of-age moment that arrives too soon and too harshly, stripping away childhood\u2019s protective naivety in one brutal stroke.<\/p>\n

The Weight of Silence<\/h2>\n

Miv\u2019s mother exists largely as an absence in the novel\u2014a woman who has retreated into silence after an attack that may or may not have been perpetrated by the Ripper. Godfrey handles this delicate subject matter with care, revealing the truth gradually while exploring how trauma ripples through entire families. Aunty Jean\u2019s bossy efficiency, Miv\u2019s father\u2019s affair with Sharon\u2019s mother, Miv\u2019s own obsessive list-making\u2014all are responses to this central wound.<\/p>\n

The revelation of Miv\u2019s mother\u2019s assault, and the victim-blaming that silenced her, lands with particular force. When she asks Miv, \u201cDo you think it was my fault?\u201d and Miv responds with an emphatic \u201cNo!\u201d\u2014we see both the generational shift in understanding sexual violence and the painful recognition that children sometimes possess clearer moral vision than traumatized adults.<\/p>\n

Community as Character<\/h2>\n

Yorkshire itself pulses through every page, rendered with the kind of affection that only comes from lived experience. The corner shops and chip butties, the church jumble sales and Wakes Week shutdowns, the derelict mills standing as monuments to industrial decline\u2014Godfrey assembles these elements into a vivid portrait of a community under siege from both economic devastation and a serial killer.<\/p>\n

Mr. Bashir\u2019s corner shop serves as an unlikely sanctuary, a place where Miv, Sharon, and Ishtiaq can be children together despite the darkness outside. The casual racism Ishtiaq and his father endure is never sensationalized but presented as the constant background hum of prejudice that marginalized communities navigate daily. When the shop is vandalized with graffiti, Godfrey doesn\u2019t need to explicitly connect it to the broader climate of fear\u2014the parallels speak for themselves.<\/p>\n

Where the Novel Stumbles<\/h2>\n

If there\u2019s a weakness, it\u2019s that certain secondary characters occasionally feel more like types than fully realized people. Aunty Jean, while memorably drawn, sometimes tilts toward caricature\u2014the opinionated northern woman with a list for everything. Some of the suspects on Miv\u2019s list receive cursory treatment, their plotlines resolved too neatly or abandoned too quickly.<\/p>\n

The pacing also falters in the middle section, where the investigative episodesmight feel repetitive. While this mirrors the actual tedium of the Ripper investigation\u2014years of fear and false leads\u2014it occasionally stalls the narrative momentum.<\/p>\n

Additionally, readers seeking a traditional mystery may find themselves disappointed. The List of Suspicious Things<\/em> isn\u2019t a whodunit where clues carefully laid eventually reveal the killer. The real Peter Sutcliffe appears only peripherally, a shadow that looms but never fully materializes until his capture. The novel\u2019s true mystery lies in understanding how communities survive collective trauma<\/a>, how families keep secrets, how children process adult failures.<\/p>\n

A Debut That Resonates<\/h2>\n

Godfrey joins a lineage of British writers who understand that the most powerful historical fiction emerges from personal memory rather than research alone. Like Alan Hollinghurst capturing AIDS-era London or Sarah Waters conjuring Victorian spiritualism, she transforms lived experience into literature that feels both historically specific and emotionally universal.<\/p>\n

The author\u2019s note reveals that her own father knew Peter Sutcliffe, lending the novel an urgency that pure imagination couldn\u2019t achieve. This is a tribute to victims and survivors, yes, but also to the generation of northern children who grew up under the Ripper\u2019s shadow, who played outside until dark despite warnings, who constructed their own narratives to make sense of inexplicable evil.<\/p>\n

The Resonance of Everyday Horror<\/h2>\n

What makes The List of Suspicious Things<\/em> remarkable is its refusal to sensationalize either the Ripper murders or Sharon\u2019s death. Instead, Godfrey focuses on the texture of daily life lived in fear\u2019s long shadow\u2014the way Miv still shells peas and reads books and negotiates friendship dramas even as the news announces another body found. This is how trauma actually works: not as constant crisis but as a persistent undertone that colors everything without consuming it entirely.<\/p>\n

The novel\u2019s final movement, where Miv begins keeping a new list\u2014\u201dA list of wonderful things. A list of all the things I loved about her and all the adventures we had had\u201d\u2014offers not closure but a way forward. Grief doesn\u2019t end; we simply learn to carry it differently.<\/p>\n

Final Verdict<\/h2>\n

The List of Suspicious Things<\/em> announces Jennie Godfrey as a significant new voice in British historical fiction. While the novel occasionally stumbles in its ambitions, these are the stumbles of a writer reaching for something beyond mere competence. This is a book about the end of innocence rendered with uncommon grace, about how childhood friendships shape us<\/a> even\u2014especially\u2014when they end in heartbreak.<\/p>\n

For readers seeking atmospheric historical fiction with genuine emotional heft, or anyone interested in how communities process collective trauma, this novel delivers. It\u2019s neither a comfortable read nor a simple one, but it\u2019s an honest one\u2014and in an era of slick commercial fiction, that honesty feels revolutionary.<\/p>\n

Yorkshire in the late 1970s was a place where the mills were dying, Thatcher was rising, and a serial killer stalked the streets. Godfrey has given us that world in all its grim specificity while never losing sight of the human hearts beating within it.<\/p>\n

If You Loved This, Try These<\/h2>\n

Readers drawn to The List of Suspicious Things<\/em> should explore:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe God of the Woods<\/a>\u201d by Liz Moore<\/strong> \u2013 Another mystery anchored in a specific time and place, exploring how communities respond when children go missing
\n\u201cWe Begin at the End\u201d by Chris Whitaker<\/strong> \u2013 A moving portrait of childhood resilience in the face of violence, with similar attention to voice and place
\n\u201cThe Essex Serpent\u201d by Sarah Perry<\/strong> \u2013 Historical fiction that captures a community gripped by fear, with rich period detail and complex female characters
\n\u201cMy Name Is Monster\u201d by Katie Hale<\/strong> \u2013 A debut exploring survival and connection in a devastated landscape
\n\u201cThe Behaviour of Moths\u201d by Poppy Adams<\/strong> \u2013 A dark, atmospheric novel about family secrets in rural England, with a child\u2019s perspective on adult mysteries<\/p>\n

Godfrey has crafted something rare: a debut novel that feels both achingly personal and historically significant, intimate in scope yet epic in emotional resonance.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jennie Godfrey\u2019s debut novel arrives like a gut punch wrapped in the comforting warmth of Yorkshire tea and chip butties. Set against the backdrop of Peter Sutcliffe\u2019s reign of terror, The List of Suspicious Things transforms a historical nightmare into an unexpectedly tender meditation on friendship, loss, and the peculiar resilience of childhood. A Yorkshire […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5301"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}