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

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Funny, piercing and singular… I can’t fathom the reason why you wouldn’t rush straight out to buy it’ Observer Nincs egyetlen nevelő sem, aki egy gyerekhez méltó bánásmódban részesítené az ott lakókat. A gonoszság szinte nekem is fájt.

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. This is a beautifully written, outstanding character study which I don’t want to end I’m so absorbed in Marianne’s life. With a few deft strokes characters spring to life and you can visualise them with ease. You view everything through Marianne’s eyes and her imagination is vivid, fertile and what comes out of her mouth is not necessarily what is in her head! She’s very intriguing though you veer from wanting to shake her and tell her to embrace the life she has to the fullest, to feeling sorry for her as she’s frequently “put down” and has much to bear including tragedy. At other times you hoot with laughter at her wit and good humour - the dialogue is sublime. Rose Tremain takes us on an emotional journey with a woman who is little understood by those around her with the exception of her friend Petronella from her school days. Meglepő, kicsit kíméletlen írás ez. A vége nyitott, mint egy szélesre tárt ablak. Nem minden regénynek van feltétlenül szüksége konkrét lezárásra. Van, amikor jobb a szívnek, ha engedik álmodozni. Ha meghagyják neki a reményt, legyen az mégoly hiú is. Tonkin, Boyd (5 March 2010). "Journeys home: Rose Tremain reflects on the past and her present life writing in the south of France". The Independent . Retrieved 9 May 2014.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. A turning point of the plot hinges on the idea that someone would receive a potentially life-changing letter, and go to bed with it clutched in their hands without having read it. From fêted novelist Rose Tremain a gripping Victorian melodrama about an orphan girl and a vengeful murder I see there is some criticism of the switching timelines. However, I feel added to the story as it unravelled slowly and served an important purpose in strengthening the connection between the past and present, as well as building empathy for the protagonist as we see her childhood. 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 married Jon Tremain in 1971 and they had one daughter, Eleanor, born in 1972, who became an actress. The marriage lasted about five years. Her second marriage, to theatre director Jonathan Dudley, in 1982, lasted about nine years; and she has been with Richard Holmes since 1992. [6] She lives in Thorpe St Andrew near Norwich in Norfolk. [7] [8] [9] Writing [ edit ] 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.’ A Traviata alapjául ifj. Alexandre Dumas A kaméliás hölgy című műve szolgált, egy tragikus történet. But no. She is forced to run away from her love to Rookery Farm where her foster father is dead, 2 of the 3 brothers have left and Nellie the foster mother who is the most beloved to her has dementia of some sort (although she does remember Lily and we see she was sad to let her go). 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. 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’.A regény szerkezete elsőre töredezettnek tűnik, rendszertelenül ugrál az időben, látszólag logikátlanul idéz fel eseményeket, és indokolatlanul ragad ki epizódokat Lily jelenéből. Aztán találtam egy második főszereplőt a regényben és hirtelen megalapozottnak tűnt minden jelenet. Az első pillanattól fogva ott ólálkodik a háttérben a halál. Annyira, hogy időközben, az árnyékok közt főszereplővé válik. A temetős jelenet például látszólag nem illik a történetbe (elsőre feleslegesnek tűnik), de aztán úgy éreztem ez a Halál nagyjelenete vagy a főpróbája. Nehéz eldönteni, mert bár kétségtelenül az ő szerepének ez a csúcspontja, de itt mégsem ér véget. Az utolsó oldalakig főszerepben van az elmúlás ígérete. Hátborzongató. Összetett, és sokrétű a mondanivalója. A nyelvezet egészen lágy, kellemes zenéje van. Okosan machinál a hosszú, összetett és a lényegre törő pár szavas mondatokkal. Erős képi világa élénken, mégis szinte tárgyilagosan vetíti ki a szemhéjunk vásznára a különös, olykor tündérmesébe, olykor horrorba hajló jelenetek sorát. Magával ragadó ez a furcsa, rettenetes, a nosztalgia édes fájdalmával átitatott hangulat, amely belengi az egész regényt.

But before Lily’s oppression can begin in earnest, she is whisked off to the Suffolk countryside. It is the hospital’s practice to farm out its charges for the first six years of their lives, presumably to ensure that they are sturdy enough to be properly brutalised. As befits the heroine of a melodrama, the arrangement also entrains a brief reversal of fortune. For at Rookery Farm, the young Lily is positively steeped in bucolic bliss, doted upon by a sweet-natured matriarch and surrounded by “a bright immensity of sky, skeins of thistledown born aloft, birds in the trembling heavens”. In a month’s time, Lily will be seventeen, but already she is a murderer. We know from the cover of the book that her story is ‘a tale of revenge’ but we don’t know until quite late in the book the reason for this act of revenge, or the identity of her victim, or how Lily carried out this murder. This is another book that I think your better off reading blind. I found it to be quite an emotional read. The rawness of the poverty and suffering people suffered in the Victorian era doesn't bare thinking about. The book is descriptively written and the characters felt true to the era and the storyline is captivating on so many levels. I loved this book from beginning to end.A little bit of Adrian Mole in a 1950s upper middle class Berkshire girl, or maybe just encapsulating the ubiquitous teenage inkling that everyone else has everything already figured out.