I was utterly bowled over by this book. If you spotted the cover and had never heard of Rose Tremain, you would probably take it for a 19th-century novel, but of course it's her latest novel, which takes place between 1850 and 1867. However, as a celebrated historical novelist, Tremain has no trouble in taking the reader back in time and plunging them into the sights sounds smells and behaviour of the era. As it happens. her previous book, Angel of Mercy, was also set in the Victorian period, so, as she has said, she had a great deal of research ready made. That's one thing to like and admire, but the plot itself is extraordinarily gripping, or at least it was to me.
Lily is a foundling. Her unknown mother left her by the gate of a park in East London where, by a lucky chance, she was found by a young policeman, Sam Trench. He carries her through the night and deposits her at the London Foundling Hospital in Coram Fields. From there, following the orphanage policy, she is transferred to a farm in Suffolk where she spends her next six years, basking happily in the love of her foster mother. So it's a terrible shock when one day she is taken to London and placed in the harsh and cruel hands of the administrators. Beatings are common, and the children are punished for grieving for their lost foster-mothers. Lily is picked out for special torment by Nurse Maude, whose abuse of her over the years is about as bad as you could possibly imagine.
All this information is fed to the reader slowly, and interspersed with an account of Lily who, nearly seventeen, has left the orphanage and is employed as a wig maker by the successful Belle Prettywood, a part-time courtesan with a heart of gold. Lily's life should be happy, but, as we learn on the first page, she is wracked with guilt and fear owing to the fact that she has committed a murder. Again it takes time for the circumstances to be revealed, though given the book's subtitle, it's not hard to get an idea. If this wasn't bad enough, Lily has met her rescuer Sam Trench, now a police superintendent, who proves to have been watching over her from a distance all her life. The two draw closer and closer, despite the fact that Sam is married. But worst of all, of course, is that Lily fears that she will one day feel forced to confess her guilt to Sam, with the inevitable result that she will end up on the gallows.
I was so completely caught up in Lily's story that I actually put the book aside for a few days before I could bring myself to read the concluding chapter, in which her final fate is revealed. I'm obviously not going to say what happens, but there' some reason for cautious optimism. What Tremain achieves so brilliantly here is the way she shows Lily's inner life as she struggles with all the conflicting elements in every aspect of her life. Here's what I wrote in my Shiny review, published a few days ago:
With so much poverty and distress and suffering Lily could easily have become a misery memoir., but Lily, despite her childhood trauma and the guilt that is hanging over her manages to retain an innocence, a goodness of spirit and a capacity for joy.
If you want to see what else I said about it, my review is here.
