Books - The Dressmaker by Rosalie Ham
My first novel of the year (how exciting!) - The Dressmaker, which I've had on my shelves for over a year, and so is also my first step up Mount TBR, and is written by a female author, so fits a square on my ljbookbingo challenge too!
"When she was only ten years old, little Tilly Dunnage was forced to leave her hometown of Dungatar in rural Australia under a black cloud of accusation. Years later Tilly, now a couturier for the Paris fashion houses, sweeps back into town hoping to make peace with her mentally unstable mother. But mid-century Dungatar is a small town, and small towns have long memories. At first she wins over the suspicious locals with her extraordinary dressmaking skills. But when the eccentric townsfolk fall on Tilly for a second time, she decides to teach them a lesson..."
Dungatar is exactly the sort of town I used to have nightmares about when I was a little girl growing up in Australia - well, a teenager. It's just where you don't want to get stuck - a place where everyone knows everyone's business (except perhaps for the dark secrets hidden away behind closed front doors), and where there's nothing to do but think about that business. It's a place where anyone a bit different is a misfit, and where misfits are outcasts - except when they can be useful - and nothing ever seems to change.
Tilly is a breath of fresh air, of course - even more so than hero-William, who soon succumbs or hero-Teddy who soon succumbs to Tilly. And yet it feels as if we're kept at a distance from Tilly - perhaps the same way she keeps the townsfolk at a distance, as they do to her - so that we're watching everything rather than being a part of it. The thing is, we're glad to be watching it from somewhere better, because Dungatar and its inhabitants are earthy and fleshy and Ham doesn't shy away from showing us this. She shows us some beauty too, but the message really seems to match with my teenage instincts - get as far away from places like this as possible!
It's a completely compelling book though - I wanted to keep reading every time I picked it up. I liked Tilly, and Sergeant Farrat, and the McSwineys who lived at the tip, and I wanted things to go well for them. It was also a pretty easy read - I swept through it in just a couple of days, partly because I wanted to but partly because I could. And although there was nothing easy about the story, there were also enough elements of the comic that it felt better - or perhaps worse! - than our glimpse of the dark secrets we shared might otherwise have made us feel.
Conclusion - excellent book, do read it! *g*