The Wet Nurse's Tale

by Erica Eisdorfer

Book Overview

Susan Rose is no average protagonist: she's scheming, promiscuous, plump, smart, funny, tender and entirely lovable. Like many working-class women in Victorian England she was born into a world that offered very few opportunities for the poor and unlovely. But Susan is the kind of plucky heroine who seeks her fortune, and finds it - with a little help from her breasts. As a professional wet nurse, she breastfeeds the children of healthy women who...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0399155767
• ISBN13: 9780399155765
• Release Date: August 2009
• Publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons
• Length: 259 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.1" x 9.1"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A Delightful Read

"The Wet Nurse's Tale" made for a fun afternoon of reading. I really like the author's style of writing and hope she will continue. The story was rich & descriptive, the characters multi-faceted. I found myself easily seeing the story through the eyes of the main character, Susan Rose. I liked the main character's pragmatic attitude toward her station in life, and her quick thinking to resolve her main issue (I don't want to give too much away).

Delicious Point of View of Below-Stairs Gossip

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

A Completely Unexpected Heroine!

This riveting story of a single mother trying to survive in 19th century England will make you laugh, think and keep you turning pages. Susan Rose is a tough, lower-class heroine unlike any other in fiction. She's a wet nurse, like her mother before her, called in when an upper-class lady is unwilling or unable to nurse her own infant. She tells her own story in plain English, not flinching from the facts of a hard life. In short chapters that don't impede the flow of the action, various ladies and women explain their reasons for hiring a wet nurse. As a young serving maid, Susan tries to warn her sister Ellen about the master at the big house, but the pretty Ellen does not listen. She loses her virginity, then the man she was to marry turns his back on her and Ellen commits suicide. The day after the funeral, Susan has to go back to work at the big house for the same family that ruined and slandered her sister. Susan's own fate is slightly less dark: she attracts the attention of the son rather than the father. The resulting pregnancy and birth launches her on the career of the wet-nurse, a demanding profession. However, Susan is tough and can make the best of things. The reader will cheer as Susan eventually takes control of her life from her abusive father and steams toward her goals. Susan is compassionate, patient, hard-working and unconcerned about breaking the rules. She takes the reader places we have never been and we are the better for it. This is a triumphant novel for all its gritty, unromantic viewpoint. Totally unexpected in character, in plot twists and in denouement! You won't regret reading it.

The Wet Nurse's Tale

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!