She has not left the house in a decade but is raising a daughter with the help of her two servants. A ten minutes walk is enough to pass from a poor and dangerous place to one of sheer opulence.Īnd that’s what happens in the second part of the book, we jump a few years ahead and enter the house of a rich widow. By that, I mean very different geography, but the inequalities and dizzying speed of change from a slum to a posh neighborhood are exactly as we can witness now. All this is observed by a party of aristocrats, who presumably feel better because thanks to their money at least the women and children have some sliver of a chance. If a child is not admitted to the institution it usually ends dead on the street within few days. The women who want to give their children have to draw a ball which color will decide their child’s fate. One of the shocking scenes in the book is the lottery, observed by the rich founders of the hospital. Bess is a shrimp hawker, got pregnant out of wedlock, but is adamant to save money and collect the child as soon as she can. We meet our main character, Bess, in 1754, when she is accompanied by her father to the Foundling Hospital, to give away her newborn baby. But I was drawn to it by the pretty cover, and also the need for some lighter reading in the middle of lockdown 3.0.
This is probably why I didn’t buy this book, it has arrived in one of the book subscriptions. The Cosmopolitan recommends the author as ‘the new Hilary Mantel’, and while I haven’t read Mantel, this recommendation coming from this specific magazine is enough to make me suspicious.
Based in 18th century London, introducing us to all levels of society through a story of a stolen child. A pure delight for the fans of historical fiction.
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