I finished the Foundling in a day and a half, as I expected. I find Stacey’s writing so easy to read, I get wrapped into it and the stories carry me along.
The Foundling is an ode to motherhood, set in an immersive Georgian London. It’s also a story of class - how the poor were (and still are) often unseen and dehumanised by the rich, with their traumas passed off as an evening of entertainment for those who could afford it.
The Foundling is based in truth, as with The Familiars, Stacey Halls has a talented of going to a place and conjuring a full novel from there. The Foundling Hospital was opened in 1739, to care for babies whose parents couldn’t look after them. They would be allowed to return and claim their children, given they had the money to pay for the care the children had received.
In the novel, we meet both the woman who has lost her child through the hospital, and a woman who has gained a child. Their similarities are in their fundamental desires and intentions, although their ways of life could not be more startling.
Both characters are written with empathy, so much so that you don’t know which way the book will go.
Alexandra, one of the main characters - is so locked in her own world, she will barely look out the window or touch her own daughter. It takes the tsunami that is Eliza to burst open the doors and windows for her to re-examine her life and her worth.
My favourite elements of the book were the descriptions of Georgian London, the streets with the shrimp hawkers and coffee houses, the stories of tenements and gutters covered in blood and grime.