the dress lodger
fifteen year old gustine is a dress lodger a young prostitute who rents a beautiful dress from her landlord to attract a higher class of clientele . surgeon henry chiver is a prisoner of his own past and is looking to start over . p doctor and dress lodger come together in the filthy cholera infected east end of sunderland . here during the worst epidemic since the bubonic plague gustine secures bodies for the doctors school in exchange for medical care for her ailing child . the arrangement is gruesome but profitable for both until henrys greed and his growing obsession with her child challenge gustines loyalty to him . in order to save her child gustine must beg for help from her chief enemy a malevolent old woman known only as the eye . p ribald irreverent heartbreaking and horrifying the dress lodger is a dickensian tour de force .
in a novel set in london during the industrial revolution a prostitute borrows a blue dress to attract a higher class of client and is shadowed through the streets by an evil old woman hired by the dress owner to keep an eye on her .