Lily: A Tale of Revenge from the Sunday Times bestselling author

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Sam is now a police superintendent, known for his skill in solving difficult murder cases. The more Lily sees of him, the more she knows she is in danger of confessing to him. Sam’s wife, too, brings up the murder which haunts Lily: Another engrossing and memorable novel by Rose Tremain, Lily is the story of an abandoned Coram Foundling Hospital baby who is fostered by a loving farming family in Suffolk until she is six years old. The law dictates that, after this time, she must return to the orphanage to learn humility, duty and gratitude despite a daily dose of punishment, abuse and humiliation.

Her influences include William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 1967 novel 100 Years of Solitude and the magical realism style. [6] In 2009, she donated the short story The Jester of Astapovo to Oxfam's " Ox-Tales" project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Her story was published in the "Earth" collection. [10] A heartbreaking story set in Victorian England from the pitch-perfect pen of Rose Tremain Antonia Senior, The Times, *Books of the Year* But please, don't go into this expecting a cosy, wintry fireplace-fitting read. Because that is one of the things Lily most definitely is not. It is clear that Lily is angry with the mother who abandoned her, and when she finds Frances Quale, a strange, reclusive woman who sells religious icons and false relics, she believes she has found her mother and sets out to prove it and vent her anger. She also harbours deep anger for the nurse who treated her cruelly from the time she returned to the Foundling Hospital after spending her first six years fostered by a kind and loving farming family.

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Lily is a novel in an historical setting, but Rose Tremain resists the label ‘historical novel’. ‘When you write about history, you can write anybody’s story,’ she says. ‘There isn’t this question of authenticity.’ The old London in which Lily lives and works is, however, realistically portrayed and the Thomas Coram Foundling Hospital did exist. Its founder and governors were kindly, god-fearing men; and wealthy women, like Lily’s benefactress, Lady Elizabeth Mortimer, helped to support such benevolent institutions. 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.

It's an interesting story that does immerse you into Victorian Life, be it in the lovely Suffolk countryside, the dirty streets of London, or the awful Foundling Hospital. Az első oldalakon úgy gondoltam, hogy ez az árva olyan, mint egy veréb. Szürke, jelentéktelen, senkinek sem kellő. Aztán valahol a közepe táján már egy kis rozsdafarkúnak láttam. Átlagosnak tűnik, de van benne valami különleges. Egy oda nem illő szín a szürkeségben. Ez a szín félelmetes is a maga nemében, mert sehogy sem képes beilleszkedni a verebek közé. Még később sem, felnőttként sem. Not all of Lily’s life is as grim as this. Tremain draws the reader into Lily’s happy early life with Nellie at Rookery farm; her work at the Wig Emporium, where Belle (who is ‘famous all over London’ – and not just for her wigs) is creating wigs for actors in a new performance of La Traviata at Her Majesty’s Opera House; and her meetings with Sam Trent, the constable who rescued her and who has remained curious about her welfare. At the heart of this novel is a taut moral drama that sits uneasily amid its more frivolous trappings Van néhány cselekményszál, amit utólag feleslegesnek érzek, mert nem vezetett sehová. Ilyen pl. Belle Prettywood betegsége és a temetői kiruccanás, de a Lilyt megmentő rendőrrel kapcsoaltos érzelmek is kilógtak egy picit. spoiler

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Aspden, Peter (5 June 2008). "Tremain novel on plight of a migrant wins Orange prize". Irish Times. There are times when Lily savours new, exciting and exotic experiences, as when Belle dresses her and takes her to the opening night of La Traviata and she mingles with the wealthy men and women who frequent such events.

Abandoned at the gates of a London park one winter's night in 1850, baby Lily Mortimer is saved by a young police constable and taken to the London Foundling Hospital. Lily is fostered by an affectionate farming family in rural Suffolk, enjoying a brief childhood idyll before she is returned to the Hospital, where she is punished for her rebellious spirit. Released into the harsh world of Victorian London, Lily becomes a favoured employee at Belle Prettywood's Wig Emporium, but all the while she is hiding a dreadful secret... She dreams of Sam Trent, who seems to be watching over her, and he also seems to have special feelings for her. It is her guilty secret, because Sam is a married man and his wife has been especially kind to her. Lily is a foundling, born in London but belonging nowhere. Her memory of a stint with foster parents, in a countryside setting which is a Constable sunset compared to the Doré hellscape that is Victorian London, sustains her through her later years at the Foundling Hospital. There, she is abused (in every sense of the word), isolated, desperate. Life regains a modicum of its early colour when she is apprenticed to a larger than life wigmaker - Lily finds a facsimile of family, of belonging. The darkness, though, remains - but it's in her soul, where she guards a fierce need for revenge, and later, a dark and terrible secret. One thing we know is that children are often like wild animals when they come to us. You were one such animal – a runaway, weren’t you? And look at you now: quite upright and well behaved and earning your living, but only because we tamed you and brought you to God.’ As with other novels by Rose Tremain, her writing pulled me right into the story, and left me thinking about long after I'd finished reading.

I have no hesitation in highly recommending this novel and it’s one I’ll reread to see what clever nuances I miss first time around. But fairy tales are often close to horror stories. Like all children at the Foundling Hospital, Lily spends her formative years with a foster family, in her case helmed by the lovingly maternal Nellie who lives on a Suffolk farm. At the age of six she is abruptly wrenched away (this was standard practice) and returned to the hospital where Tremain imagines a loveless climate of abuse on a par with that at Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries.

Lily tried once again to turn around, to pull free of the nurse, to run to wherever Nellie had gone … ‘Stop that!’ said the nurse. ‘She’s gone and you will not find her. There are no sentimental goodbyes here. We forbid them. Your foster-mother did her duty and that is all. Now, she takes in another baby and you will be forgotten’. Tremain brilliantly conjures up the atmosphere of Victorian London while the story is cleverly structured to keep the reader guessing to the end Richard Hopton, Country & Town House

Rose Tremain új regénye egy kislány története. Egy olyan kislányé, akiben van tűz és akarat, de a sorsa folyton csak sodorja, és összezúzza bátor szellemét. Lilynek, mondhatni, esélye sincs.