Trades of The Flesh
Faye L. Booth
Forge, Mar 1 2011, $14.99
ISBN: 9780765327840
In 1887 in Preston, dying Nell Ketch tells her oldest daughter Lydia to take care of her younger sister Annabel. Her mom suggests Lydia use her comely body to make a living. Lydia’s only other choice is the brutal workhouse.
In 1888, Lydia works for brothel owner Kathleen Tanner, as she takes care of herself and her sibling. Client Henry Shadwell makes an intriguing offer as a photographer he wants to take pornographic pictures of her. Realizing this is an easier means to make money she agrees. Over time she assists him in obtaining corpses for his anatomy class because he is a surgeon that he teaches. As she falls in love with him and he wants only her, they keep their sexual relationship as it always has been with him being her paying customer.
This is a superb Victorian historical tale starring a young woman desperately trying to keep herself and her sister out of the workhouse though the protagonist hopes to leave the brothel business soonest too. The story is character driven, but its the Dickensian descriptions of Victorian England even two decades after the writer’s death that grips the audience; as being a woman of ill repute is less acceptable even with her patrons (and their families) than dying young at the workhouse. With a powerful unexpected final twist, readers will appreciate Trades of the Flesh, one of the few ways an impoverished woman can make a living.
Harriet Klausner
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