Latest news with #Margery
New York Times
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
You've Attended the Tale of Sweeney Todd. Now Hear Mrs. Lovett's Story.
For half a century — much longer, if you go back to the original 1840s penny dreadfuls — people have thrilled to the story of Sweeney Todd, the murderous London barber who cut short the lives of priests, fops, sailors and one especially loathsome judge before he met his own gruesome end. Sweeney's tragic losses and appetite for vengeance have been well documented, most notably by the musical genius of Stephen Sondheim. But what of his partner in crime, Mrs. Lovett, who popped his poor victims into her pies? Does her tale not need attending, too? David Demchuk and Corinne Leigh Clark's epistolary novel 'The Butcher's Daughter: The Hitherto Untold Story of Mrs. Lovett' gives the woman beside the man her own turn in the spotlight. Part Victorian historical fiction, part grisly horror, the book follows a mysterious woman, Margaret C. Evans, a.k.a. Margery, as she recounts her life story to a never-seen (and, we learn at the opening of the book, missing) journalist, who is investigating the disappearance of Mrs. Lovett 50 years before. Though she does not disclose her true identity outright until fairly deep in the novel, it is clear within the first few pages that Margery is Mrs. Lovett, who — in a departure from the source material, where she is killed by Sweeney — is very much alive and confined to a nunnery. Margery's harrowing tale reframes Mrs. Lovett not as a villain but as a maligned girl fighting to survive. She's a seductively evocative narrator, making it easy to forget that her every word should be taken with a hefty pinch of salt. It will surprise nobody familiar with the musical that this is a gory book. The violence starts early, at Margery's father's butcher shop, where she is awakened each morning by the sounds and smells of sheep being slaughtered, and where it is a shame bordering on sin to let anything go to waste. At 16, Margery catches the eye of a wealthy surgeon when a toddler is hit by a carriage in front of her shop and, in an attempt to save the child's life, she amputates his leg. When Margery's father dies soon thereafter, her mother sends her to work for the doctor. The horrors only increase from there: In the surgeon's home, Margery faces medical experiments, botched abortions, Freemason conspiracies. By the time she lands in the pie shop on Fleet Street, she has been drugged and forcibly inseminated, fallen in love with a deaf prostitute, had her baby stolen and murdered the shop's owner — oh, and discovered there's a serial killer upstairs who keeps dropping corpses in her back room. Demchuk and Clark have clearly done their research, crafting a ghoulish version of 1830s Britain that sets the stage for Margery's misadventures. The book seems to be aiming for the sort of feminist reclaiming of familiar stories that have proliferated in recent years, from the lushly literary ('Circe') to the fantastically irreverent ('My Lady Jane'). But in making Mrs. Lovett a vulnerable yet determined teenager, and in focusing on the brutal realities facing women — especially single, working-class ones — in the early 19th century, the authors lose some of the madcap genius that makes her so fun onstage. That Lovett is enterprising — an innovator, if a macabre one; this Lovett struggles to stay afloat. That Lovett is disturbingly zany; this one is, by unfortunate necessity, a realist. This is a wild, high-octane, blood-soaked tale, but by the end, everything crimps together just a little too neatly (with one final, groan-worthy twist). Life, like baking or butchery, is a messy business. I wish the authors had left a bit more room for untidy possibilities.
Yahoo
12-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Sister Finally Gets to Say Goodbye to Her Brother 80 Years After He Went Missing During WWII
More than 80 years after her brother went missing during World War II, a San Francisco woman was finally able to say goodbye. On Friday, Feb. 7, Staff Sergeant Yuen Hop was laid to rest at Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, according to local outlet KABC-TV. It was the first time since 1943 that the serviceman — who went missing after his plane was shot down by enemy fire — was able to return home to California. 'It took a long time, but we have closure now,' Sergeant Hop's sister Margery Hop Wong, 94, told The New York Times. Sergeant Hop, who served as waist gunner for the U.S. Air Force, was just 20 years old when the B-17G he and his fellow servicemen were flying was gunned down during a mission in Germany in 1944, according to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. The crew was able to parachute to safety, but some were taken as prisoners of war by the Germans. Three men, including Sergeant Hop, went missing, according to the agency. Related: Cameras Captured Deadly Crash of Private Jet Owned by Motley Crüe's Vince Neil, Authorities Blame Landing Gear 'None of us really knew what was going on,' Margery told KABC-TV. She was just a teen when her brother died. Throughout the course of her life, her parents and her five surviving siblings didn't often talk about her lost brother, the Times reported. After six years of investigation, the three men who went missing were declared 'non-recoverable,' according to the Defense POW agency. Sergeant Hop was posthumously awarded a number of medals, including a Purple Heart. In 2013, American and German researchers started digging into Sergeant Hop's case again. Eventually, Nicole Eilers, a historian with the Department of Defense, and others investigating the case learned that the three missing airmen were captured by German SS troops and were killed on their way to a P.O.W. camp, according to the Times. Remains were found in a cemetery in Kamp-Bornhofen, allowing Eilers to confirm that Sergeant Hop had been buried there. Related: Photographer Captures Moving Portraits of Last WWII Veterans and Learns Their Survival Stories 'It's an incredible moment,' said Eilers of solving such a case, according to the newspaper. 'I'm not going to give up on these guys ever.' Margery told KABC-TV that she and her husband were 'shocked' to get the news of her brother's location after so many years had passed. Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. The funeral was a special moment with her extended family. They were finally able to say farewell. 'Keep looking and keep asking,' Margery told the outlet about others looking for answers. 'I don't think they should give up hope… because you never know.' Read the original article on People
