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    The Dressmaker: A Novel
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    The Dressmaker: A Novel
    Unavailable
    The Dressmaker: A Novel
    Ebook190 pages2 hours

    The Dressmaker: A Novel

    By Beryl Bainbridge

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize: This psychological drama set in Liverpool during WWII follows the courtship of a US soldier and an English working-class girl.

    Rita is a passive and naïve seventeen-year-old who has been raised by two middle-aged aunts: Nellie, a curmudgeonly dressmaker obsessed with polishing the furniture, and Margo, a lively widow wise to the ways of the world. Rita’s father, whom she calls Uncle Jack, is too busy with his butcher shop the next town over to pay much attention to his daughter. Regardless, surrounded by the ruins of houses bombed in the Blitz, this strange family is bound together as they face wartime life in Liverpool. The government is enforcing stringent rations on even the smallest pleasures, and an influx of well-off American soldiers is wooing all the local girls.
     
    Though World War II has dramatically changed the family’s standard of living and altered their perspective of the world, Nellie is determined to enforce her traditional ideas about the proper behavior and priorities of the lower middle class. This includes hampering the romantic desires of both Rita and Margo.
     
    It is no wonder, then, that Rita starts lying to her aunts about where she goes on Saturday nights. She has fallen in love with a Yankee GI named Ira. Or rather, she has fallen in love with the idea of this young soldier and all that he represents as someone who can make her a bride and whisk her away to a lavish life in the United States. But Ira is hardly the man she’s dreamed of, and a relationship is the last thing on his mind.
     
    In a sinister turn of events, the years of stifled happiness finally catch up to Margo and she betrays her young niece. And through this transgression, Nellie reveals just how far she will go to enforce her rules, especially when it comes to the furniture . . .
     
    Written in strategically-doled-out prose that keeps readers on the edge of their seats, The Dressmaker is a thrilling historical novel about repressed sexuality, sibling rivalry, and the dire consequences of bigotry. An immediate classic in British fiction, it was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and made into a film starring Jane Horrocks, Billie Whitelaw, and Joan Plowright.
     
    This ebook features an illustrated biography of Beryl Bainbridge including rare images from the author’s estate.

     
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Media
    Release dateOct 4, 2016
    ISBN9781504039383
    Unavailable
    The Dressmaker: A Novel
    Author

    Beryl Bainbridge

    Dame Beryl Bainbridge (1932–2010) is acknowledged as one of the greatest British novelists of her time. She was the author of two travel books, five plays, and seventeen novels, five of which were shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, including Master Georgie, which went on to win the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the WHSmith Literary Award. She was also awarded the Whitbread Literary Award twice, for Injury Time and Every Man for Himself. In 2011, a special Man Booker “Best of Beryl” Prize was awarded in her honor, voted for by members of the public.   Born in Liverpool and raised in nearby Formby, Bainbridge spent her early years working as an actress, leaving the theater to have her first child. Her first novel, Harriet Said . . ., was written around this time, although it was rejected by several publishers who found it “indecent.” Her first published works were Another Part of the Wood and An Awfully Big Adventure, and many of her early novels retell her Liverpudlian childhood. A number of her books have been adapted for the screen, most notably An Awfully Big Adventure, which is set in provincial theater and was made into a film by Mike Newell, starring Alan Rickman and Hugh Grant. She later turned to more historical themes, such as the Scott Expedition in The Birthday Boys, a retelling of the Titanic story in Every Man for Himself, and Master Georgie, which follows Liverpudlians during the Crimean War. Her no-word-wasted style and tight plotting have won her critical acclaim and a committed following. Bainbridge regularly contributed articles and reviews to the Guardian, Observer, and Spectator, among others, and she was the Oldie’s longstanding theater critic. In 2008, she appeared at number twenty-six in a list of the fifty most important novelists since 1945 compiled by the Times (London). At the time of her death, Bainbridge was working on a new novel, The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress, which was published posthumously.  

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    Reviews for The Dressmaker

    3.5/5

    40 ratings4 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Set in Liverpool in the late days of WWII, the novel is more psychological than active, and possibly its subject matter had not been so widely explored when it was first published, but most of it felt a bit shabby from use to me, much like its characters. Poor Rita, raised by two repressed and frustrated aunts (one technically not "maiden" as she had been briefly married to a soldier who died in the First War) with occasional assistance from her father, their brother, whom she calls "Uncle Jack". Naive as she is, when she is invited to a neighbor's party and meets an American GI, Rita seizes what she sees as an opportunity to experience some other sort of life, although her fantasies are somewhat cloudy. She tries to hide her trysts from the family, thereby increasing their significance in her mind. Naturally it is clear to the reader that this will not end well, but the actual ending (reminiscent of something written by Susan Hill or Shirley Jackson) came as a surprise to me. None of the characters, although well-drawn for stereotypes, struck up any sympathy in me despite their misery and dysfunction; I neither liked them nor found them particularly interesting. And I found the author's inability to settle on one name for Auntie Margo (or was she Marge?) maddening. Characters and narrator interchange the two names randomly, or at least without any rhyme or reason I could discern. I thought at first that might be a glitch in the edition I have, but I checked Amazon's "look inside" feature for a much earlier paperback edition, and it occurs there as well. That alone took my rating down to 2 1/2 stars (I tend to work up or down from 3); the ending inched it back up to neutral.
    • 3/5
      Gosh after just reading the books description lower down the page, I am surprised as this isn't the book I read, the 17 year old girl didn't marry a GI at all, she was a young girl from a somewhat dysfunctional and old fashion family. She has been brought up to be emotionally retarded as she has not been allowed to be herself (a young girl) She has lived with these elderly people all her life, and does not have a clue how to act around a young man of her own age, clouding her judgment as to the young mans character. A very strange little book (it is only 150 pages long) and I can't say what I felt about it! Sad for the girl I think and angry about her upbringing, by people who really should not have had the responsibility of it.
    • 3/5
      After reading several novels by Bainbridge, I've come to the conclusion that I will never be a huge fan. I didn't outright dislike them; they just didn't do much for me. Aside from a few moments, this one was pretty milquetoast until the very end, when something unexpected occurs--and then it just stops with no satisfying conclusion. I guess the point she is making is simply to show how insular this particular family is. Nellie, the dressmaker of the title though perhaps not the main character, is in a love/hate relationship with his sister, Margo. The two share their home with "our Rita," the seventeen-year old daughter of their brother, Jack. When his wife died, Jack sold his house, gave Rita into the care of his sisters, and moved into a flat above a butcher shop. He is still extremely involved in all of their lives, but Rita, who knows he is her father, calls him "Uncle Jack," probably just to go along with Auntie Nellie" and "Auntie Margo." Nellie is the reserved, responsible one; Margo is the daring and sometimes wild one. She had been married to a soldier who came back from the trenches suffering from the effects of gas attacks. It was Nellie, however, who nursed him until his death.Set in the aftermath of World War II, the story revolves around young Rita falling in love with an American GI named Ira. As teenage girls still do, Rita initially hides her beau from her family, using the ploy that she is visiting her friend Cissie--whom the aunts have never met. If you like reading about the sappiness of teenagers in love, this part of the story should appeal to you, because Rita is one of the sappiest. There are the usual dreams of marrying Ira and flying off to live in the US. And a lot of worrying about whether or not Ira will call, show up for a scheduled rendezvous, write her a letter, doesn't talk enough, wants too much, wants too little. It becomes clear early on that this is an ill-suited pair and a one-sided romance. The remainder of the novel, as one would expect, focuses on what happens when a neighbor tells Nellie that Rita has been stepping out with an American soldier and when Ira decides that she is way too young (i.e., immature) for him. And as I said above, there is an unexpected and rather unresolved conclusion.Good writing, fleshed out if stereotypical characters, but nothing to get excited about.
    • 2/5
      The cats name was rather unfortunate.