Customer Reviews

The Wet Nurse's Tale

5 star:		(43)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Erica Eisdorfer nails the Victorian era. She is on top of the class divide, the race divide and the gender divide. Her main character, Susan Rose, speaks in a working-class dialect that is neither stilted nor affected. I value this highly as it is a nuance that something many authors cannot master. Eisdorfer also introduces some characters only for the brief spell of one or two pages, each one sharing his or her reasons for hiring a wet nurse. These people, too, come alive off the page and you get to know their personalities very well, even if you only interact with them for two pages. I really enjoyed these vignettes that Eisdorfer put in at the end of every chapter. They were fun to read and would sometimes be alluded to later in the story as well. In fact, I feel certain that one of the vignettes has a large bearing on the end of the story, only I can't quite put my finger on how the two are connected. I will have to mull over that some more.

Susan, though, steals the show. She is so wonderfully real and easy to identify with. She does not beg for sympathy from anyone, and does not have stupid affectations to get attention. Susan isn't the most fabulous and exciting woman in literature. But she sets her mind on a goal and goes for it, and one can't help admiring a woman for that.

The only quibble I had with this book was its unexpected plunge into a somewhat Gothic storyline. I did not see that coming at all, from the start, and the book was a bit darker than I expected because of it. But the story is compelling and plausible, and Eisdorfer knows her Victorians. I'd highly recommend the book to any fans of historical fiction!

The Wet Nurse's Tale is the story of young Susan Rose, who must find work as a wet nurse when her baby is taken from her. The story offers a fresh perspective into the lives of the servants who must wait on the very rich, even when they are treated as if they are no more than things. Susan is a clever protagonist who can think her way out of any situation, even though she can't read or write. She is kind and attentive, and earns trust from almost everyone she comes in contact with. But she also proves fierce and cunning when the well being of her own baby is at stake. I enjoyed this story tremendously, as it is both entertaining and emotional. It is a wonderful example of a mother's love for her child. I also enjoyed the little stories at the end of each chapter that told why certain women would choose to put their babies up with a wet nurse instead of nursing the babies themselves. It was a quick read and left me wanting more of Susan at the end.

I first encountered The Wet Nurse's Tale as an finalist excerpt in last year's Amazon Breakthrough Novel contest. I was disappointed when it finished--I wanted the rest of the story! It was one of only two excerpts I gave five stars to. I finished that review saying I would not only buy this novel, I would buy it new in hardback.

Well, I did just that. And it's so worth it.

I typically read sci-fi, fantasy, historical romance, and animal stories. I own very few general fiction books--those found in the "literature" section at Border's. But The Wet Nurse's Tale caught my interest and never let go.

Despite this being Eisdorfer's debut novel, it's extremely well-written. It flows along and brings you with it, just as easy and entertaining as any long-established author's book. The protagonist, Susan Rose, is very believable. Her voice is realistic, and her views are both enlightening and amusing. The situations and attitudes fit the time period. The between-chapters vinettes are just the right length to give a glimpse of these mothers and their various reasons for giving up nursing. Nothing jars you from the read, nothing about it disturbs your enjoyment of this setting Eisdorfer has created.

I highly recommend this, not only to gen fiction and historical fiction readers, but to anyone who enjoys a well-written, interesting, and entertaining book.

This novel follows the story of Susan Rose, a wet nurse to the rich, like her mother before her. While her mother took children into her home; raised and nursed them along with her own, Susan is a new generation of wet nurses- ones that live alongside their masters and are privy to their lives.
This was a very entertaining and quick read, I got caught up in the story and finished it within the night. In order to be a wet nurse, you must have a child of your own first-- and the story begins here. Eisdorfer jumps through time with her character, beginning at the birth of Susan's first child, then jumping back to her own childhood. She manages this in such a way that you never feel disjointed-- only eager to find out what happens next.
Even though I knew the basic facts about wet nursing, this book was also informative, and I enjoyed learning more about the Victorian child rearing culture. Wet nursing seems so foreign to us now, but it was a mainstream fact of life at one point in time. Interspersed between chapters of Susan's story are short vignettes by mothers (and sometimes fathers) giving their reasons for searching out a wet nurse, and choosing Susan's mother. At first I was confused by the story's interruption, but as the book goes on Eisdorfer does a good job marrying these short chapters into the story as a whole, and they end up adding to the tale.

Eisdorfer's debut opens in the midst of childbirth.

"There was snow on the ground when my time came. I'd expected pain but, Reader! How could this be! I bellowed, I know I did....When it was all over, I cried for my mother, to think what the poor thing suffered for all of us."

A middle child with nine siblings, unlettered but intelligent, plump, big-hearted Susan Rose grows up knowing her place in the scheme of Victorian England. She's a servant, born to defer to those richer and better born than herself.

Like her parents and siblings before her, she goes off to work at the Great House as soon as she's old enough and expects to stay there until she marries. Even after the master rapes her sister who then commits suicide, Susan and her sister Mary return.

"Our father, almost as useless as a pot about bringing in money, could drink it up fast enough. It was us, I told Mary, who had to send some little money back lest Mam end up in the poorhouse with all those brats."

But Susan's big heart lands her in trouble. She goes home to have her baby but too soon her bitter, drunken father forces her to hire herself out as a wet nurse, leaving her own child behind.

Tragedy and triumph alternate as Susan finds her calling, providing love and sustenance to the babies of the middle and upper classes and a great deal of informative entertainment to her readers. Susan's voice is strong, compelling and true to her times as she schemes, defers and manipulates as she must.

Eisdorfer calls on the traditions of Fielding, Dickens and Hardy to illuminate the daily routines, disparities and rank injustices of Victorian life while delivering a tale that's bawdy, dramatic, humorous and wholly engaging.

Susan Rose has been brought up by an abusive drunk of a father and a mother forced into wet-nursing to keep hearth and home together. When Susan, in service at the manor house, finds herself pregnant by the master's son, she is forced by her father into following in her mother's footsteps, only a few weeks after the birth of her son.

Erica Eisendorfer, in a remarkable first novel, has produced a work of originality, interest, and intelligence. No "English rose", Susan is a spirited, strapping young woman with no formal education but a deal of common sense, optimism, and sheer grit. Her story begins slowly enough, but by the halfway point, the suspense kicks in and makes it un-put down-able. Susan Rose is a most unconventional heroine, but heroine she most definitely is.

Interspersed with Susan's tale are brief vignettes narrated by the mothers of her many charges, explaining just how it came to pass that they were in need of her vital services. Now the reader sees both sides of the situation, which by contemporary standards is a rather peculiar one.

The author tempers what could be a bleak topic (racism, classism, and sexism) with touches of humor and joy. Upstairs, downstairs, and all around the town - it's all here in The Wet Nurse's Tale.

This novel is an absolute page turner, the highest praise for a historical novel. The reader is very much invested in the fate of the wetnurse Susan, although, given her survival skills, the outcome is never in doubt. Along the way, we get to learn a good deal about nursing and its place in the English class structure of the period, from the enjoyable vantage point of below-stairs gossip. Love Is Like Water: Short Stories

I bought this book having heard excellent things about it, and while the main character was well-rounded and her narrative voice was fairly reliable (also the setting in time and place was plausible), the quality of the writing overall was not what I had hoped to see and the snippets and assorted personal letters of peripheral characters didn't "earn" their space on the page or in the story as a whole. This seemed like more of a draft than a finished novel; with more development of the characters who actually interacted with the narrator or perhaps less use of epistolary exposition from the characters who didn't directly take part in the action (this struck me as "lazy" on the part of the author because it was the easy way out of doing any actual character development of those other parties) it could have been SUCH a good book. As it is it was worth reading but I regret having purchased it rather than waiting for a copy from my local library.

I am so pleased that I did not see that Elizabeth Gilbert had recommended this book, otherwise I would not have purchased it. This story is in an utterly different style and class(read better)to Ms Gilbert's excessive self-indulgence, I'm afraid Erica Eisdorfer did herself an injustice by associating with Eat Pray Love. Eisdorfer pulls you in from the get go, and offers a somewhat unique perspective to the Victorian era. If you are not easily offended, you won't regret reading this tale. If you are in the mood for something a little different and have been intrigued by the comments, then look no further, you've found your next read. Definitely recommend for book clubs. Enjoy!!

I gravitate to historical fiction where the heroines are imperfect, complex women who have a passion that propels the action of the narrative. Susan Rose may be considered a simple woman because she is illiterate and poor, but she can take care of herself!