This is Stacey Halls’ second book – I actually have her first, The Familiars, lined up as an audiobook, but haven’t gotten around to it yet. Needless to say, after thoroughly enjoying The Foundling, I started The Familiars very shortly after.

The Foundling starts in London in 1748, when Bess Bright, impoverished shrimp girl, gives up her illegitimate daughter to The Foundling Hospital, as she cannot afford to raise her. Raffled off in a lottery, women are given a chance to draw a ball from a bag, with the colour of the ball determining the fate of their child. The opening scenes of the book are stark, brutal, and draw a clear contrast between the rich and the poor of Georgian London, setting up some of the themes which come through later in the book.

Fast forward six years, and Bess returns to collect her child, with every penny she has saved over the last six years. But when she gives the details of the child she left – a number and a trinket from the child’s father – she’s informed that the child was collected the day after she was given the Foundling – by her.

The process of finding her child is relatively straightforward, which I wasn’t expecting at all, and Bess is then appointed as a nursemaid to her own daughter. What follows is a contrast between two women, both of whom love this child, and the lengths they will go to to claim the child they perceive to be their own. Bess’s narrative shifts then, and we see Alexandra Callard’s perspective, as she appoints her new lady’s maid, Eliza.

The writing in this book is absolutely gorgeous. From the rich drawing room that Mrs Callard lives in to the deprived alleys that Bess hides in, the atmosphere was so richly created that I could almost smell the shrimp on Bess’s hands. The two main characters are richly drawn, and I empathise with both of them so hard, it was incredibly difficult to try and take sides in their battle for the child. And I think that was a huge strength of the book. Neither mother is perfect, but both love the child, and are trying to give her the best life they can. The book as a whole isn’t so much a mystery – who took the child, how, why? – but rather an exploration of what motherhood is, how children are raised, what children need, and the stark divide between the impoverished and the wealthy in London in the 1750s.

For the most part, I thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed this novel. I had a couple of quibbles, though – the characters outside of Mrs Callard and Bess were quite thin, and didn’t have a huge amount of substance to them. This was particularly evident in Ned, Bess’s brother, Ambrosia, Alexandra’s sister, and Lyle, the lampboy. This was a little disappointing, because so much of the rest of the book was really rich, and to have these cardboard-like supporting characters was slightly disappointing.

I also felt like the book wrapped up incredibly quickly. There were mere pages between the dénouement and the eventual resolution, and for a book which went into so much detail previously, that felt like quite the letdown. I would have loved to see more of the thought process and negotiation of the two women as the resolution played out, but it was skipped over in favour of a thin romance. Disappointing.

Also, Charlotte, the child, had a pet tortoise, but it was winter, so the tortoise would have been hibernating…

Overall though, this was a sumptuously written book, with achingly evocative scenery and plot, and a moral dilemma worthy of sitting down and thinking about for a long time after I finished it.