The only thing I was absolutely certain about from the start was that Lily would be a really robust little spirit, although I wasn’t certain initially how her courage would show itself, or how her relationship with Sam was going to go.

An abandoned newborn, Lily is rescued by a policeman and taken to the Foundling Hospital founded by Thomas Coram. From that moment, Nurse Maude singles her out for special punishment, and this goes on, in more and more perverted ways, until Lily leaves the hospital to go and work at Belle Prettywood’s Wig Emporium, where the sewing skills she had been taught by Nellie make her one of Belle’s most valued employees. You can unsubscribe from our list at any point by changing your preferences, or contacting us directly. Earlier this year, the Freudian psychoanalyst and literary critic published On Wanting to Change, an extended essay on how psychotherapy – and the conversations it facilitates – can create potential for genuine change. a lot of her pain in held inside but as you read the story you kind of take the role of Lily on so when events play out it’s like it’s your own emotions playing out on paper!

All of our books are 100% brand new, unread and purchased directly from the publishers in bulk allowing us to pass the huge savings on to you! To become a subscriber to Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader’s Quarterly Magazine, please visit our subscriptions page. Lily’s story is one of fleeting kindness, institutional cruelty, breathless possibilities, and – as a young woman reunited with Sam – volatile desires; it is also, as the book’s subtitle notes: a tale of revenge. However, the cruel treatment experienced by the children taken in by the London Foundling Hospital is of a more extreme, and perverted, nature than anything found within the pages of Oliver Twist. So much to love here, Rose Tremain's beautiful prose pulled me into Lily's world, I felt her despair and anguish and the grim conditions of Victorian London, but also the beauty of the Suffolk countryside and the love and warmth she experienced there.

I’ll be looking up Stacey Halls’s novel The Foundling to see what inspiration she takes from it, and checking out the current exhibition at the Museum which follows a Foundling child’s journey from abandonment to fighting in the battle of Trafalgar. Not everyone who works in such places, however, is as good-hearted as their founders, and harsh punishment and cruelty, then as now, were not uncommon. I have to admit to skimming a few parts of the book, really just because I wanted to see where this was all going. Yes, there are definitely echoes of Sara Collins “Confessions of Frannie Langdon” in here, and it would be hard not to make comparisons, but actually, the story is quite different. Overall, if you like well written historical fiction, with a good plot that you can immerse yourself in then this may just fit the bill.Now, usually I say here I will try not to include spoilers but that’s not easy for this book so I will be giving spoilers to this book in this book review. Lily was born out of a kind of crossover,” explains Tremain, over the phone from her home in Norfolk. Abandoned by her mother in a London park in 1850, newborn Lily is saved by young policeman Sam Trench, who carries her to the city’s Foundling Hospital (built in real life by 18th-century philanthropist Thomas Coram). Subtitled ‘A Tale of Revenge’, t he narrative moves back and forth in time between Lily’s early years spent with a foster family, her time at the London Foundling Hospital and her subsequent employment at Belle Prettywood’s Wig Emporium.