The Dress Lodger

Sheri Holman is an astonishing writer, and this is the first of her novels that I'd read. Part Dickens in its depiction of lives of poverty and social injustice, part Bram Stoker in its gothicness at times. Holman creates unique and memorable, even haunting, characters, both sympathetic and unsavory, and lets us see their hearts without imposing her judgments on us. The introductory scene with Foz and Les Chats Savants is truly one of the most memorable things I've ever read.

A poor man's 'Crimson Petal and the White' (Faber). Holman states in the reader's guide at the back of the Ballantine edition that she was inspired by Dickens' 'Bleak House', but this is presumably a Dickens born in America, barely on nodding terms with London, and born over a hundred years too late. Although an interesting concept, with informative background into the 1832 cholera epidemic and the extreme poverty of a northern England town, Holman misses the mark with her dark study of nineteenth century life. The narrative is littered with anachronisms (gold lame, in the 1830s?), American phrases and colloquialisms (blocks instead of streets, charley horse instead of cramp, diapers, candy, hairdos, and even a white picket fence!); the show more dialogue is badly written (she should have had an English editor check over her 'bad language', as the blue-tongued landlord sounds like a five year old experimenting with naughty words!) and peppered with random attempts at local dialect; and her characters are more caricatures than vivid personalities. The second person narration suits the style and setting of the novel, but it's been better executed elsewhere, and although Holman doesn't censor the horrors of disease and prostitution, the suggestion of a happy ending for Gustine and Pink seems tacked on after nearly three hundred pages of misery and degradation. Read Michel Faber's 'Crimson Petal' instead, or indeed Dickens' 'Bleak House'. show less

Prostitution, grave-robbing, disease that makes people's skin turn blue... combine all this with a one-eyed hag, a child whore, a baby with a grotesque chest deformity, and a hot-headed doctor = one heck of a gritty look at 1830s England. Not for the faint-of-heart but a compelling, historically valid (much researched) look at the underclass in the 'bad old days.' This historical fiction takes a hard look at the epicenter of the cholera epidemic, Sunderland, England and the lengths people who have little will go to to survive.

The Dress Lodger is a grim and unsavoury Dickens.

The writing is very descriptive, bordering on purple prose. It begins with a “fourth wall” technique speaking to the character just written, and continues throughout to use uniquely creative techniques. The characters are well drawn, if occasionally stereotypical.

This is not a novel for the squeamish or easily offended. You will learn a lot about Cholera, grave robbing, vivisection and prostitution. Maybe more than you bargained for.

My patience did grow thin with the wordiness towards the end of the book. I really wanted to be done with it. While it’s an extremely good story, the manner of its telling left me feeling depressed and disheartened. I was glad to be moving on.

An omniscient narrator implores a young matchstick painter to describe Gustine for the reader… “She is a sumptuous, fantastical wedding cake. A walking confection. A tasty morsel.” This is one book that lives up to its book cover. You can see Gustine as a dainty young woman with pale blonde hair done up in a complicated style wearing her blinding blue dress against the gritty backdrop of an English city. Despite her evening garb, we are told that on her feet are mud-spattered, worn-heeled work boots. Yup, Gustine is a “lady of the night” in a rented gown.

For the most part, I liked this Gothic horror story. The Dickensian atmosphere of dark and dingy 19th century Sunderland, England on the brink of a cholera outbreak set a show more bleak tone. Gustine hopes to win a lifesaving favor by procuring bodies for the training of medical students under the tutelage of Dr. Henry Chiver. This is not a book for the squeamish.

The author goes into grisly detail about Dr. Chiver’s work that borders on obsession. The story is based on fact about early medical research and the cholera epidemic of 1831. I enjoyed the creative use of the narrators’ voice(s), although I can see where it makes the book difficult to follow at times. In the spirit of Dickens, Ms. Holman created some deliciously descriptive names including the Labour in Vain Pub, a crone called “The Eyeball” or frequently just “Eye,” and Mag Scurr’s Pawnshop/morgue - “a shrine to hope.” There is little hope to be found in these pages, but they provide an insightful contrast to the stories of the gentry in Victorian England. show less

Turn the pages of The Dress Lodger and you’re turning the dial on a time machine. Destination: England, 1831.

Sheri Holman’s novel is one of those rare pieces of historical fiction which thrust you so completely into another time, another place, that the modern world—with all its bright, sparkly conveniences—melts away. Welcome to the Industrial Revolution, dear reader. You’ll feel the mud, you’ll smell the rotting wharf life, you’ll taste the bitter cholera on your tongue. You’ll also want to shower afterwards.

The Dress Lodger is part thriller, part character study, part social treatise. But it’s all good.

Written in the florid style of Charles Dickens, but with the darkly ick-factor of a modern-day Stephen King, the show more book follows several characters through the port town of Sunderland during a horrific cholera epidemic in the fall of 1831. Gustine is a potter’s assistant by day, a 15-year-old prostitute by night. As she walks the streets of Sunderland looking for a “quick poke�€? from any man with coins in his pocket, she’s trailed by an ugly old hag known only as the Eye. The one-eyed crone is paid by Gustine’s pimp to “keep an eyeâ€? on her while she plies her private wares. Gustine is one of those prostitutes who’s known as a “dress lodgerâ€?—each night, she wears a blue gown to attract men. Her pimp hires the Eye spy to make sure the valuable dress isn’t stolen. Here’s how Holman describes the arrangement:

Dress lodging works on this basic principle: a cheap whore is given a fancy dress to pass as a higher class of prostitute. The higher the class of prostitute, the higher the station, the higher the price. In return, the girl is given a roof over her head and a few hours of make-believe. Everyone is happy.

Except everyone in Sunderland is miserable. The town has been quarantined, strangling the city’s economy. Ships must remain off-shore while their cargo rots in the holds below. Meanwhile, most of the residents believe the cholera epidemic is a government conspiracy created to scare the poor classes. Most people don’t even believe there’s such a thing as the deadly disease. To the working class citizens, doctors are the real villains in early 19th-century England—after all, they’re the ones who go around robbing graves and dissecting corpses, all in the name of science.

This brings us to our next character: Dr. Henry Chiver, a zealous young surgeon who’s recently fled Edinburgh where he was involved in a famous case of two anatomists—Burke and Hare—who were convicted of murder and grave robbing. Holman paints Henry in some pretty unflattering light—he’s selfish, self-righteous and chillingly devoted to the pursuit of science…even at the expense of human life.

Henry and Gustine collide early in the course of the novel as each discovers the other has something they want. For Henry, it’s a chance for more bodies as Gustine leads him to corpses she discovers during her street peddling. For Gustine, the possibly deranged doctor represents her last best hope for her infant, a little boy who was born with his heart on the outside of his body (yes, literally…you have to read it to believe it).

The novel is filled with bodysnatching, crude dissections and scenes of primitive medical horror that Hannibal Lecter would probably read like pornography. The weak-stomached are warned that some pages are rather hard to…well, stomach. But, thanks to Holman’s incredible eye for detail, the language is always vivid and rich. Here, for instance, is one particularly memorable grave-robbing scene:

Henry drops the body sharply against the coffin and scrambles back to the surface. This isn’t happening. Calm down. Calm down, he tells himself. Men far less competent and careful than you have dug up bodies and not been driven mad by it. Reach in, feel under her armpits. Pull. Yes, this is not the smell of rye, but merely a ripening body not yet preserved in salt. This heaviness I understand; it is not a frantic pulling back to the grave but the purely scientific phenomenon of blood pooling in the extremities. He lies flat on his belly and tugs the young woman free of the earth.

Holman’s way with words is so good that it overshadows some of the book’s problems—namely, the unlikable Henry who takes center stage in the narrative like a raving Dr. Frankenstein, and the pitiable Gustine who blindly and resolutely walks toward tragedy even as we’re clenching our fingers where they grip the book and calling out, “No, no, no!â€? The Dress Lodger ends in a heap of grim, cluttered tragedy which almost literally hurts to read. But I can see Holman’s point: this wasn’t the best of times, it was the worst of times. show less

The abject poverty of life for those without means in 1830s England is described so vividly that you feel yourself in the midst of the wretchedness with Ms. Holman's characters. The cholera epidemic of 1831, grave robbing for medical research, and prostitution all figure into this work of historical fiction. The plight of workers in that era – matchstick painters with phosphorous poisoning, potters with potters' cough, pottery painters with lead poisoning, dock workers and prostitutes and the pitfalls awaiting them – are also graphically pictured. I wouldn't call this an enjoyable read, but it was definitely well written and educative.