The Dress Lodger (Ballantine Reader's Circle) [Paperback]

Sheri Holman (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 2, 2001 | Series: Ballantine Reader's Circle

In Sunderland, England, a city quarantined by the cholera epidemic of 1831, a defiant, fifteen-teen-year old beauty in an elegant blue dress makes her way between shadow and lamp light. A potter's assistant by day and dress lodger by night, Gustine sells herself for necessity in a rented gown, scrimping to feed and protect her only love: her fragile baby boy. She holds a glimmer of hope after meeting Dr. Henry Chiver, a prisoner of his own dark past. But in a world where suspicion of medicine runs rampant like a fever, these two lost souls will become irrevocably linked, as each crosses lines between rich and destitute, decorum and abandon, damnation and salvation. By turns tender and horrifying, The Dress Lodger is a captivating historical thriller charged with a distinctly modern voice. . . .

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Dress Lodger is engrossing historical fiction. As in the best of its genre, Sheri Holman's atmospheric, miasmic tale set in cholera-stricken Sunderland, England, circa 1831 is based on fact. Its epigraph from Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary--"Grave: A place where the dead are laid to await the coming of the medical student"--casts the novel's thematic lodestone, steering the reader into a deathly plot pursued through streets emanating the sounds, insufferable smells, humor, adversities, and disease of an early-19th-century industrial city.

Fifteen-year-old Gustine--the dress lodger--is a potter's assistant by day, prostitute by night. Her overbearing pimp and landlord has her permanently shadowed by an indefatigable, mysterious old woman "called Eyeball or Evil Eye or Gray Sister by boys who have read their Homer, but mostly called just plain Eye." Otherwise how could he guard his investment in the startling blue dress in which Gustine rents herself? Her trade, he explains, "works on this basic principle: a cheap whore is given a fancy dress as a higher class of prostitute, the higher the station of the clientèlle; the higher the station, the higher the price." Gustine's garment beckons Henry Chiver, an ambitious young surgeon who has fled Edinburgh, having been implicated in the convictions of infamous pioneer anatomists Burke and Hare for murder and grave robbing. For this doctor, desperate to reestablish his tarnished reputation through medical discovery, the heart is the favorite organ, "the singular fascination of his life." But to further his researches, and quell the increasing demands of his paying students--who are restless for induction into the arts of the scalpel--Henry requires dead bodies for dissection, to the horror of his naïve, philanthropic fiancée. But the Anatomy Act, which allows doctors to obtain corpses legally, has yet to pass through Parliament, and a suspicious public is terrifying itself with stories of murderous "burkers."

Street-smart Gustine, a pragmatist trapped in unrelenting poverty, is all heart for her nameless little son who wears--literally--his heart on the outside. His rare case of ectopia cordis is just the sort of anatomical anomaly whose study would make a name for the doctor. Amid the gathering momentum of the cholera epidemic, Henry and Gustine strike up a fatal pact: life for her son in exchange for a fresh supply of dead bodies for Henry's dissection. With mordant Dickensian wit and Elizabeth Gaskell's deft touch for gutsy outcast women seizing control of their destiny, Sheri Holman carves out a rich, imaginative adventure as incisive and as gruesomely fascinating as a 19th-century operating theater. --Rachel Holmes --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Scrawny and tough, only 15, Gustine is the heartrending protagonist of Holman's brilliantly stark portrayal of 19th-century urban life, class warfare, cruel medicine and encroaching pestilence in the English city of Sunderland. With remarkable breadth and depth, the narrative vividly portrays the human suffering spawned by the early Industrial Revolution. Inhabitants of city slums endure oozing sores, infections, liceAnot to mention the devastating cholera morbus making its lethal way through Sunderland's population. Gustine works two jobs to support her beloved illegitimate infant, who was born with his heart outside his chest cavity. By day she's a potter's assistant, but to earn enough to live, by night she walks the streets wearing an expensive, elegant blue gown supplied by her pimp/landlord as a ploy to attract higher-class tricks. Pimp Whilky Robinson employs a deaf-mute, one-eyed old woman to follow Gustine constantly, to protect the dress, his treasured investment. Gustine hates the old woman, called "The Eye," but cannot shake this all-seeing symbol of mortality and fate ("Does not old age always dog youth? Does not monstrosity forever shadow beauty?"). Seeking medical help for her ailing child, Gustine strikes up an alliance with surgeon and anatomist Dr. Henry Chivers. The doctor needs corpses for dissection and since Gustine stumbles upon plenty of dead bodies in her night work, she becomes a resource for the ambitious, depraved doctor. The cholera epidemic, graphically and tirelessly described, entwines the lives of the doctor and Gustine, even as Dr. Chivers grows reckless in the resurrection business, eventually inviting violent retribution by impoverished citizens who discover their loved ones' pauper-graves exhumed. Holman (A Stolen Tongue) delivers a wealth of morbid, authentic detail, as well as an emotional pivot in her captivating Moll Flanders-like heroine. The major characters are buttressed by a vivacious cast of minors: Whilky's cowed daughter, Pink; a troupe of traveling thespians; pawnbrokers; rat catchers; and sailors. Holman's style is risky and direct, treating scenes of Gustine's quick, humiliating back-alley couplings as well as the doctor's hypocritical sleaze, with unflinching emotional precision. This dazzlingly researched epic is an uncommon read. Agent, Molly Friedrich. 40,000 first printing; BOMC and QPB selections. (Jan.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1st Ballentine Books ed edition (January 2, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345436911
• ISBN-13: 978-0345436917
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.7 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (203 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #322,850 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

54 of 59 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Would Scare The Dickens Out Of Charles D.! January 26, 2000

By taking a rest HALL OF FAME

Format:Paperback

Dickensian, or so and so meets Dickens, is probably a publicist at work. This authoress writes in a style that is her own, so if a label is to be attached how about "Holmanian". That this books take place in the 19th century does not require a comparison to Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, or Anthony Trollope. If her next book takes place in the 21st century will she be compared to Isimov?

This book is well written; an interesting tale, some history, and I would happily have read it were it twice as long. This Authoress's very harsh, foul, and all 5 sense offending England, makes many descriptions that others have written, descriptive of a city that while not perfect, is tolerable, and tolerated.

This book rubs the reader raw, nothing is embellished, think of something that you fear, and then imagine it has been brought to the page with a beautiful turn of phrase. This Authoress writes what other authors, and other readers may have been thinking. Many have mentioned topics in the book in their reviews, if they make you shift a bit in your seat, Sheri Holman will keep you there as going to bed and dreaming of her characters would be exponentially more frightening.

I enjoyed the book enough to go and pursue her first, and subsequent works will be added to my reading as well.

Good read, you would not be disappointed, just a bit unnerved.

46 of 51 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars historical fiction at its best March 21, 2000

By Karen Kirsch

Format:Paperback

Such a strange coincidence that the 2 books I bought at Border's included Ambrose Bierce...the quotation by him to begin "The Dress Lodger" and the title of the other..."Ambrose Bierce and the Queen of Spades." Caleb Carr's "The Alienist" got me intrigued with life during the 19th century. I have since looked for books that dealt with this period of time. I read a review of "The Dress Lodger" in the Detroit Free Press and knew that I would be fascinated by it. I was not disappointed. Gustine and Dr. Chiver led me on a historical jaunt through an England that was beset by cholorus morbus...the deadly cholora. Holman gripped me in the first chapter. Her way of telling this story seemed quite unique to me. While the book is quite morbid in its content, her characters are well drawn-out. I could empathize with Fos, Pink, and especially Gustine. I've passed this on to a friend and purchased Holman's first, looking forward to another great story. At 54 years old, I'm learning about the history that I didn't learn in school. I have purchased non-fiction books on Teddy Roosevelt, WWI (about the flu that killed millions of people that I never heard about), and now cholera. Maybe I can share with my students the facts that I wasn't aware of.

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A masterful, haunting narrative April 22, 2000

By Judith Anderson

Format:Paperback

The book has a rare, marvellous, even poetic style. It is extremely well crafted and constructed literature, and I can't wait for her next book.

The author masterfully re-creates England of the early last century, from the extreme poverty to the classist attitudes of the poor--something most period-pieces forget--as well as the rich. We are caught in a world of whores, disease, grave-robbers, and ladies. The author does not judge or euphemize: she simply re-creates and recounts. As a result, every detail of the book takes on a glowing vividness.

By far, the best aspect of the book is its narrative. One aspect that pleased me was the author's way of bringing us close to the characters and events and then distancing us at crucial moments, making the events seem hauntingly real. As such, the book has a sort of tension and a feeling of uneasiness that keept me reading anxiously, even in the happiest moments. It is in the book's masterful control of the plot, characters, and even of the reader--particularly in the second-to-last chapter--that you know that you are in the presence of someone who will become a great writer.

The Lodger is divided into two halves. In the first, we learn essentially not to judge a book by its cover; in the second, we learn that you cannot change what you are. These themes exist programmatically as well - in the first, the plot lures you into false conceptions about itself and in the second, the plot plays with the idea of a "historical novel" by leading you into several possible outcomes. Thankfully, though the author is aware of narratological and generic aspects, she does not use them as cheap gimmics, nor does she give them full keel. The author seems to know as much about controlling the author as about controlling the plot.

The one unpleasant aspect of the book is/are the narrators. Most of the work is written in a simple, third-person narrative, but there are occasional intrusions by first-person-plural narrators. These latter narrators exist in the past as well as in the present and detract from the period-authenticity of the book. These narrators feel free to mix contemporary and modern slang and use British together with American orthography (+neighbour+ and +jail+, respectively). Even when I understood their narratological function, I found they jerked me around too much. Then again, I am an editor and tend to be somewhat anal. There are also a few small things that were left unanswered, for example, did Dr. Clanny recognise Gustine as the body snatcher?

On the whole, the book is excellent.