When Lily is old enough, she leaves the hospital, finds a job and in time reconnects with the man who saved her. He takes her to the Foundling Hospital at Coram Fields where, much later, she is horribly abused by a vindictive nurse. Slightly Foxed brings back forgotten voices through its Slightly Foxed and Plain Foxed Editions, a series of beautifully produced little pocket hardback reissues of classic memoirs, all of them absorbing and highly individual.

After suffering years of brutal hardship at the Hospital, Lily is released into the world of Victorian London. 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. Whether there really were wolves in London in the 1850s is disputed by those he tells, but the baby’s foot was certainly bleeding, as if it had been chewed. This book did manage to get the feel of a Victorian novel, dark and sensory and this was put across in the writing, which was good but the dialogue wasn’t as good as I expected.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. It is nearly three-quarters of the way through the book that we reach the grisly murder scene, though the readers must have guessed, long before that, whom she had killed.

Underlying Lily’s story, however, but never spelled out, is Tremain’s own anger that historical ills, especially the mistreatment of children in institutions, still exist. Trading Address (Warehouse) Unit E, Vulcan Business Complex, Vulcan Road, Leicester, Leicestershire, LE5 3EB. 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. Rose Tremain’s latest novel is both a mystery set in 19th-century London and an indictment of the abuse of children. Tremain, who is 78, has embraced several eras and territories across her best-selling works, earning numerous literary accolades (as well as her CBE, in 2007).We’re told right at the beginning that Lily is a murderer and as the book progresses we can guess the victim. Then it ends with her thinking if the police come after her (Sam Trench the person she loves being the head detective if they arrive) then she would drop herself in a dark well. Tremain turns it into something quite different: a suspenseful tale of love, cruelty, revenge and justice. Yet, memories of her time in the foundation and a need to understand her origins underpin her daily life.

We meet one of the most grotesque figures ever encountered in literature; her fate, the reader feels, is entirely deserved, however shocked we may be for thinking so - there is much here which challenges our educated, twenty-first century sensibilities.

The story was pretty grim and we could delve into the great mystery as to why humans actually enjoy tragedy at all. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. The audience in their finery are so held by the drama that they have mostly forgotten which tiaras or mantillas or feathers they are wearing.

The Hospital would pay foster parents to raise orphans through their earliest childhood, and Lily is lucky enough to be placed with Nellie Buck, a kind and motherly woman who has only sons, and falls in love with bright, pretty little Lily, as Lily does with her. The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network. things stood out when I first noticed this book, foremost my daughters middle name is Lily so that actually caught my eye, not just the name but the fact it’s a short, sharp title for a book which intrigued me, I also loved the vivid colours on the book cover, it’s very pleasing on the eye.Lily does get revenge but that’s what haunts her because she’s a good person which she demonstrates time and time again.