Lizzie Borden Society Forum

Has anyone read Annette Holba's new book, "Lizzie Borden Took An Axe, Or Did She?" Mine is on the way...

I have seen the book and plan to order it from barnes and noble when I get paid this week. From the blurb I read about it, it sounds good.

I'm waiting for mine to arrive also. I ordered it from amazon.

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I've got mine from Amazon. From the point of view of Borden researchers, the meat of the book consists of five essays previously published in The Hatchet or the LBQ. Dr. Holba has cleverly packaged these as a college textbook designed to teach students to use critical thinking skills to analyze narratives of all kinds. Lizzie Borden's story is a good choice for this: it has blood, mystery, murder, and hints of unsavory sex; it's a story that almost everybody has heard about but whose facts and folklore are widely divergent; there is a great deal of written evidence from the time and a number of retellings.

The Lizzie researcher who isn't interested in critical theory is unlikely to find anything new here.

The Lizzie researcher who is interested in narratives qua narratives will wonder why there isn't a chapter explaining Lizzie's lifelong notoriety in terms of Michel Foucault's carceral continuum.

I guess I need to order it, it sounds good.

Thanks, wordweaver -- I found your review very helpful.