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The Dress Lodger
- Narrated by: Nadia May
- Length: 12 hrs and 37 mins
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The Dress Lodger
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Summary
Surgeon Henry Chiver is a prisoner of his own past. Implicated in the Burke and Hare killings in Edinburgh, in which beggars were murdered so the corpses could be sold to medical schools, he has come to Sunderland to start a new life. He has a loving fiance, an influential uncle, and an anatomy school that is chronically short of teaching cadavers.
Doctor and dress lodger come together in the filthy, overgrown East End of Sunderland. Here, during the worst epidemic since the bubonic plague, Gustine secures bodies for the doctor's school, until Henry's greed and his growing obsession with her child challenge her loyalty to him. With cholera bearing down on the city, Gustine must turn to her mortal enemy, the Eye, in her battle for the life and afterlife of her child.
Critic reviews
"With remarkable breadth and depth, the narrative vividly portrays the human suffering spawned by the early Industrial Revolution....This dazzlingly researched epic is an uncommon read." (Publishers Weekly)
"Holman's vivid writing, rife with historical social commentary, renders Sunderland's residents and their sometimes macabre interactions disturbingly real." (Booklist)
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What listeners say about The Dress Lodger
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall2 out of 5 stars
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Performance1 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Knight Reader
- 02-03-22
Accents atrocious, weak story and research not used to an advantage.
Firstly the narrator performs the accents of the characters from Sunderland in an embarrassing manner. Accents can leap from a Yorkshire accent to a Scottish, obviously no research into North East Englands phonics. This audiobook just made me very annoyed with the author and narrator. I almost got to third chapter. However, already found this book very repetitive. Particularly about the newly built bridge of the day, the towns other notable new buildings/landmarks are missed or brushed past too briefly. Sunderland’s involvement of the civil war where barracks were placed in the area due to its geographical advantage. I suppose if you want fiction which includes historical facts, you need a regional writer to create a story which focuses on one English town. Without all this, it’s not a great read and did not provide me any entertainment.
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Overall3 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story2 out of 5 stars
- xBethyboox
- 20-02-22
A bit mismatched
The use of random American words in a novel about Sunderland is a bit mismatched and throws you off, it’s an ok story but I wouldn’t really recommend it or rave about it, some parts were better than others.
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- Julie T
- 28-05-14
Sorry, a disappointing novel for me...
The book begins promisingly, cleverly engaging the listener as the characters as introduced, but, as we get to know them, these individuals become increasingly wooden and predictable.
(I confess, however, that I abandoned the book during Chapter 10, so I'm only commenting on Part 1 and just-into Part 2 of this audiobook!)
The story is set in the early 1830s, but the language can't seem to make it's mind up where it belongs in historical terms, fluctuating between an attempt at low-life Georgian vernacular and modern-day slang...
And, although we find ourselves in Sunderland, the vocabulary is irritatingly all-American: "blocks" on the street, "diapers" instead of nappies, "pants" instead of trousers etc. (I can't quite understand how such "mistakes" survive the editing process..?)
The narrator, Nadia May, is clearly a capable actor, but she seems to have trouble deciding whether the heroine, Gustine, is an experienced "woman of the world" whose voice is dark and full of contempt and suspicion, or an innocent young teenager who trills and giggles... I didn't like these inconsistencies.
As the novel opens, Ms Holman acknowledges a plethora of advisers and historical sources. Sadly, I fear that she was shockingly ill-advised on a number of issues since there are so many historical detours in the narrative, not to mention blatant historical errors! This might not detract from the fictional story for many readers, but, for me, this author simply isn't able to revisit and re-enliven history as can Peter Ackroyd...
If you want to read Ms Holman on her "home territory", try "Witches on the Road Tonight" instead. There may, of course, be historical inaccuracies in that book too, but it's a compelling story based in a contemporary US, with flashbacks to a magical, pre-war, rural America. It was certainly a better listen than "The Dress Lodger"!
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