The Dress Lodger

By: Sheri Holman

Narrated by: Nadia May

Fifteen-year-old Gustine is a "dress lodger", a young prostitute who rents a beautiful blue dress from her landlord to attract a higher class of clientele. To make sure she earns her fees and to keep her from running off with his fantastical gown, her pimp has set a malevolent old woman, known only as "the Eye", to follow her through the back alleys of Sunderland. By day a potter's assistant, by night a courtesan of the streets, Gustine works to support her fragile only child, born with a remarkable anatomical defect.

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.

©2000 Sheri Holman (P)2000 Blackstone Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"Narrator Nadia May is at her best as she narrates this bizarre story with appropriate irony and even humor....A stunning experience." (AudioFile)
"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)

Brilliant

A story of poverty vs wealth, pestilence, greed, pandemic, science; the importance of education and public health and respect for all people.
The pestilence is cholera, and the story is of today.
The narrator is excellent. Prepare to be enthralled, the read “the Mammoth Cheese” by the same author.

Dickensian in style. About the cholera epidemic UK

The chilling similarities between public fear and disinformation regarding cholera, and the current pandemic, made this a different read than when I first read this 15 years ago or so.

Very timely. About cholera but could be now

This is a gritty look at the life of a lowborn young lady. Doing her very best just to make it through life. The doctor that may or may not be able to help her. And life during the Cholera epidemic in Britain. Through struggle and pain, the very poor fight for survival on many levels

Absolutely Brilliant!!!

Historical fiction at best. Genius writer. Raw rivetting story. Narrator awesome - fast clip. Loved book!

An unexpected treasure

I have stopped expecting much from fiction fiction in the free catalog. This was a pleasant surprise. Thoughtful and welcome home, the story is a compassionate look into the lives of impoverished people of the early 19th century. Holman humanizes those whose living conditions would dehumanize them. She shows us how interconnected we are across lines of class and privilege, especially when mutually challenged by an epidemic. As an all great historical fiction, the reader discovers go how different the past is, and how similar it is to the present. Yes, the past is a different country and they do things differently there. And yet, we are still the same human creature, living now or then, at the margins of survival or in the lap of respectability and comfort. As in all my favourite books, this one shines an honest light on the ugliness of life, and also a upon a kind of redemption that is possible in the face at all.

Excellent storytelling- I loved this book

The details and the performance make you feel like you have time traveled. I was hooked

Hard story, brilliantly told

This is not escapism, it is better. Rather than making me feel distracted from my life's issues, it has made me feel grateful! As historical fiction goes, I feel as educated as I was entertained! Loved it!

Wonderful historical fiction

I found this novel quite enjoyable from beginning to end. The audible version has a fantastic narrator who brings the story even more to life.

Mediocre

The book started out pretty awful. I almost stopped listening, but I wasn't home to erase it and start a new book, so I kept listening. I am mostly glad that I kept listening, though I can't say that this is a "good" story. I only gave it three stars because I didn't DISlike it, either. I couldn't find it in myself to like any of the characters, nor did I find myself feeling sorry for Gustine, though I felt that maybe I should. I don't feel that this was a well-written book. The characters I felt a good book should make you like or at least feel some connection or sympathy for: Pink, Gustine, Baby, Henry, Audrey, and The Eye. I really disliked Henry and Pink, the end was too predictable for Baby and not enough was told about him for me to feel anything at all for him, and Audrey and Gustine were too... something. Shallow, maybe? I felt that by the time the story of The Eye was revealed it was too late to redeem her character. Despite my dislike or antipathy for the characters, the story was interesting enough to keep me involved to the end and the plot was an interesting enough idea.

A true masterpiece!

I read this book ,and now I've listened to it and it was so amazing to hear ,the the Narrator is brilliant and totally brought the book to life , genius.One of my absolute favorites !