I read books and I know things: Review of Lucie Dumas by Katherine Mezzacappa

London, 1871: Lucie Dumas of Lyon has accepted a stipend from her former lover and his wife, on condition that she never returns to France; she will never see her young son again. As the money proves inadequate, Lucie turns to prostitution to live, joining the ranks of countless girls from continental Europe who'd come to London in the hope of work in domestic service.

Escaping a Covent Garden brothel for a Magdalen penitentiary, Lucie finds only another form of incarceration and thus descends to the streets, where she is picked up by the author Samuel Butler, who sets her up in her own establishment and visits her once a week for the next two decades. But for many years she does not even know his name.

Based on true events.

A Five Star Read

This felt like dropping into someone’s life halfway through and just… sitting with it for a while.

On the surface, everything seems quite calm and put-together, but there’s this quiet heaviness running underneath the whole time. Not in a dramatic way—more like something that’s just always there, even in the background of normal, everyday moments.

I really liked the London setting. It’s not big or showy at all—it’s mostly rooms, routines, familiar places—but that actually made it feel more intimate. You get the sense there’s a whole world outside of it, but Lucie’s life stays quite contained, which says a lot without needing to spell it out.

Lucie herself is very self-aware. She understands her situation, even if she can’t really do much to change it, and that gives the story this calm, almost matter-of-fact tone. Monsieur brings a kind of structure to her life, but also makes you aware of how limited it is. And then there’s Brigid and Alfred, who feel a bit warmer, a bit more real—but they only ever offer small glimpses of something different, nothing that fully shifts things.

What stood out most for me is that there’s no big turning point. Nothing suddenly changes. It’s more like everything slowly, quietly narrows over time. Her past and present kind of blur together, and you start to see how she ended up where she is without there ever being one defining moment.

Also—her son. That part really stayed with me. You never get a clear answer, and the book doesn’t push it, but it’s always there in the background, shaping how everything feels.

* very quiet, almost intimate atmospher

* relationships feel a bit off-balance, in a realistic way

* more about what’s unsaid than what actually happens

My thoughts summed up in one posh sentence

A subtle, reflective historical novel that builds its impact slowly, and stays with you for the way it observes a life rather than explains it.

This book is available on

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Katherine Mezzacappa

Katherine Mezzacappa is Irish but currently lives in Carrara, between the Apuan Alps and the Tyrrhenian Sea. She wrote The Ballad of Mary Kearney (Histria) and The Maiden of Florence (Fairlight) under her own name, as well as four historical novels (2020-2023) with Zaffre, writing as Katie Hutton. She also has three contemporary novels with Romaunce Books, under the pen name Kate Zarrelli. The Maiden of Florence was shortlisted for the Historical Writers’Association Gold Crown award in 2025 and has also been published in Italian.

Katherine’s short fiction has been published in journals worldwide. She has in addition published academically in the field of 19th century ephemeral illustrated fiction, and in management theory. She has been awarded competitive residencies by the Irish Writers Centre, the Danish Centre for Writers and Translators and (to come) the Latvian Writers House.

Katherine also works as a manuscript assessor and as a reader and judge for an international short story and novel competition. She has in the past been a management consultant, translator, museum curator, library assistant, lecturer in History of Art, sewing machinist and geriatric care assistant. In her spare time she volunteers with a second-hand book charity of which she is a founder member.

She is a member of the Society of Authors, the Historical Novel Society, the Irish Writers Centre, the Irish Writers Union, Irish PEN / PEN na hÉireann and the Romantic Novelists Association, and reviews for the Historical Novel Review. She is lead organiser for the Historical Novel Society 2026 Conference in Maynooth, Co. Kildare.

Katherine has a first degree in History of Art from UEA, an M.Litt. in Eng. Lit. from Durham and a Masters in Creative Writing from Canterbury Christ Church.

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