NOVEL: The Women in Black
AUTHOR: Madeleine St John
YEAR OF PUBLICATION: 1993
REVIEW:
This one is lighthearted and sweet. The titular women in black are employees (wearing matching dresses as uniforms) in the Ladies’ Frocks Department at Goode’s, a department store in Sydney, Australia, in the year 1960. They’ve got troubles of the domestic sort. There’s a neglected wife in a loveless, sexless, child-less marriage. There’s a Miss Lonelyhearts, pushing 30 and longing to settle down, tired of the men she meets at parties. There’s a very young one, unsure of her way in the world and longing for the education her father forbids her. There’s Magda, an emigree from Slovenia, glamorous and exotic, who had been through hell during the war, and who has a fierce appetite for the finer things in life. The author has a warm regard for all of her characters, as well as a keen eye for their foibles.
***
Finely evocative of a particular time and place, as well as a bit of a send up of mid-century mores, this one goes down particularly easily. Wrongs are righted. Jack shall have Jill. As the elderly Miss Jones says to the innocent Lisa, “A clever girl is the most wonderful thing in all Creation you know,” and, so she is. Her employer observes her leaving work at the end of the book, “Young girl. New frock. Box of chocolates. That’s all just as it should be!”
***
Read this one with Henry Mancini or Herb Alpert on, and imagine yourself at one of Magda’s parties. And maybe you’d better buy that dress you’ve had your eye on, just in case…
RATING (one to five whistles, with five being the best): 3 1/2 Whistles
***
HOW TO PURCHASE: Amazon
***
ALSO ON OUR BOOKSHELVES:
A Patchwork Planet, Anne Tyler
A Room With a View, E.M. Forster
An Infamous Army, Georgette Heyer
Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Blue Highways, William Least Heat-Moon
Bonjour Tristesse, Francoise Sagan
Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?, Roz Chast
Cockpit Confidential, Patrick Smith
Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
Ed Emberly’s Drawing Book of Animals, Ed Emberly
Endangered Pleasures, Barbara Holland
Envious Casca, Georgette Heyer
Gaudy Night, Dorothy L. Sayers
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, & Jack Thorne
Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen, Laurie Colwin
Hyperbole and a Half, Allie Brosh
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
If on a winter’s night a traveler, Italo Calvino
Malice Aforethought, Frances Iles
Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, Helen Simonson
Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town, Jon Krakauer
My Life in France, Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme
Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
Notorious RBG, Irin Carmon & Shana Knizhnik
One Summer: America 1927, Bill Bryson
Out of the Blackout, Robert Bernard
Parnassus on Wheels & The Haunted Bookshop, Christopher Morley
Plotted: A Literary Atlas, Andrew DeGraff
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, Carlo Rivelli
Super Sad True Love Story, Gary Shteyngart
The Cuckoo’s Calling, Robert Galbraith
The Dancer of Izu, Kawabata Yasunari
The House Without a Key, Earl Derr Biggers
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot
The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., Adelle Waldman
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat, Oliver Sacks
The Monogram Murders, Sophie Hannah
The Mother & Child Project, Hope Through Healing Hands (ed.)
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Muriel Spark
The Tender Bar, J.R. Moehringer
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce
The Unrest-Cure and Other Stories, Saki
The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin
They Call Me Naughty Lola, David Rose
Up At the Villa, W. Somerset Maugham
84, Charing Cross Road, Helene Hanff
***
Laura LaVelle is an attorney and writer who lives in Connecticut, in a not quite 100-year-old house, along with her husband, two daughters, and a cockatiel.
Laura can be contacted at laura@newswhistle.com
***
Lead-In Art Courtesy of world of vector / Shutterstock.com
