A film adaptation of her 2016 novel The Gustav Sonata (an ode to friendship, set in post-WWII Switzerland) is also in development. The hospital has provided fodder for both literature and art over the centuries, from Dickens to Stacey Halls’ 2020 novel The Foundling , and it’s the theme of abuse which Rose Tremain picks up on in her new novel, Lily . Of course, her suffering and her guilt would be with her forever, but this would feel more in keeping with the character that Tremain has built up. I imagined a very emotional journey but I had no idea just how emotional it would be and I underestimated greatly how I would feel.

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In a series of intriguingly entitled essays, Beaumont investigates the literature and experience of city walking. Post-recovery, her memories of hospital are fragmented yet gruelling; she mentions how she became unable to eat and dangerously underweight, and how her co-ordination was so shot that she struggled to sign her name. The story was pretty grim and we could delve into the great mystery as to why humans actually enjoy tragedy at all. I felt the plot didn’t really go anywhere, and the references throughout the novel to the murder committed by Lily felt overdone and melodramatic, without having any real substance.

Ho letto quasi tutti i libri di Rose Tremain e la delusione dopo la lettura di questo titolo è stata enorme. Lily does get revenge but that’s what haunts her because she’s a good person which she demonstrates time and time again. Abandoned at the gates of a London park one winters night in 1850, baby Lily Mortimer is saved by a young police constable and taken to the London Foundling Hospital. I understood that you were meant to have an emotional connection to her because of her backstory but I didn’t get that from the story.

I would have probably enjoyed this more if I hadn’t known it was by Rose Tremain, whose work I normally love. Maybe she opens up and orphanage where children no longer have to go through the emotional torture of being raised by a family then separated from them. From Sunday Times bestselling novelist Rose Tremain comes a gripping novel of murder and revenge set in Victorian England. 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. At Books2Door, we believe that reading is a fundamental skill that every child should have to help improve their vocabulary, grammar, and critical thinking skills.