The Dressmaker: A Novel

This excellent book takes place in Liverpool during the later part of World War Two, focusing on a working-class household consisting of two sisters and their niece (one of whom is the dress-maker of the title). Their brother, Jack, a butcher, is their niece Rita's dad, and he figures prominently in this story, as well. Basically, the plot is centered what happens after an illiterate, amoral, Southern "white trash" "Yank" (strangely enough) named Ira walks into Rita's life. The resultant chaos and disruption this vulgar nonentity causes this repressed, stolid little working-class English family is massive. A great book that is well-written; it is extremely "English," in the same way that Josephine Tey and P. G. Wodehouse are. It evokes the atmosphere of wartime England in a way very interesting for an American like myself to read..

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.

This seemed a very strange book when I started it and I didn't care for it at all but as I continued reading I got drawn into the story and ended up liking quite a bit.

Id her stuff before - I bought it because it was short listed for the booker prize. I used to live in England and I could picture the houses and everything thing she described, even though it was placed in WW2 - It read very quickly and had a shocking end - I enjoyed it.

A dull and dreary read, although a good description of wartime England. Sad, boring and unhappy characters, very little action.

Very interesting...communicated the feeling of time and place almost too well.

Clever writing.

The book arrived in good condition but the plot is not too intriguing.

“The Dressmaker” is set in Beryl Bainbridge’s native Liverpool during World War II. The central character is Rita, a 17-year-old girl who lives with her two aunts, even though her father, Jack, is still alive. Rita’s mother, however, died when she was only a child, and Jack, unable to bring his daughter up himself while running his butcher’s shop, entrusted her to the care of his elder sisters Nellie and Margo. (Margo is also known as “Marge”; the two names are used throughout the book interchangeably). For most teenage girls their father is one of the most important characters in their lives, but for Rita Jack is merely someone she sees occasionally, mostly at weekends; he is no longer even “Dad”, but “Uncle Jack”.The year is 1944, so the Yanks are “overpaid, oversexed and over here”. (This was a common wartime jibe at our American allies, here placed in the mouth of Jack). The most important thing in Rita’s life is her romance with an American soldier, Ira. Rita has been influenced by her friendship with an older girl, Valerie, who has recently become engaged to another GI. Valerie’s young man Chuck, however, is intelligent, well-spoken, polite and from a good family. Ira is none of these things, but Rita, perhaps as much in love with the romantic idea of becoming a “GI Bride” as she is with the man himself, is wilfully blind to his faults.As the blurb on the back of my edition states, Nellie and Margo are not so blind. The two sisters, although Rita tends to lump them together, are quite different in personality. Nellie, the “dressmaker” of the title, is an emotionally repressed spinster. Margo is a widow whose husband died in the influenza epidemic after World War I. In the intervening years she has tried to find love with other men, but without success, and it is implied that Nellie’s disapproval is part of the reason why she has not succeeded.This has been described as a “gothic psychological novel”, which I think is an accurate description if we understand the word “gothic” in its modern sense. Earlier gothic writers such as Matthew Lewis and M R James dealt mainly with the supernatural, something largely lacking in their twentieth-century successors. Modern gothic fiction may be macabre or horrifying, but this sense of horror derives from human evil rather than from entities such as ghosts or demons. Ian McEwan’s “The Cement Garden” is another gothic novel in this sense from the seventies.For most of its length, in fact, “The Dressmaker” is not particularly “gothic”. In many ways, in its depiction of provincial working-class life, it resembles the “kitchen sink” social-realist works of Bainbridge's male contemporaries such as Stan Barstow and Alan Sillitoe. The “gothic” element comes in at the end, and yet, although the ending is shocking, it is not altogether surprising. The reason is Bainbridge’s skill as a writer and her ability, while ostensibly describing the humdrum details of everyday life in 1940s Liverpool, to build up an atmosphere of emotional tension and claustrophobia so intense that nothing her characters may do, however, macabre, can totally surprise us.This was the first of Bainbridge’s novels that I had read, and she is certainly an author I will look out for in future. “The Dressmaker” well deserved its shortlisting for the 1973 Booker Prize.

I’m from Liverpool and so recognised a lot of the areas, I found that there was too much detail where it wasn’t needed and, most of all it led to an abrupt ending which I do dislike when I have stuck with a storyline for so long!

Arrived promptly. Love Beryl Bainbridge and this story didn't disappoint, it's maybe now my favourite after the Bottle Factory Outing

Couldn't get past the first twenty pages, I was BORED!

I brought this for a gift for my mum and the book came incomplete as there were many pages missing from the back of the book so she was unable to finish. Very disappointed.