Weekend Review: The Seamstress of New Orleans

 

The Seamstress of New Orleans / Diane C. McPhail
New York, NY : John Scognamiglio Books/Kensington Books, 2022.
346 p.

This is a book I picked up at my library solely for the title and promise of sewing inside! It's a historical novel set in Chicago and New Orleans in 1900 -- not my usual genre but I thought I'd give it a chance. 

It's okay. I wasn't really caught up in the story, finding it a bit repetitive and wishing the focus had been shifted a bit. It follows two female leads, Constance and Alice. Both have just lost their husbands, Constance's to death and Alice's to disappearance. Left on her own in Chicago, Alice makes her way down to New Orleans where she's drawn into the preparations for an all-female Mardi Gras krewe, hired as a seamstress to make Constance's gown. 

Now if this part had been the primary focus -- Mardi Gras, the unusual presence of an all-female krewe, New Orleans itself, plus of course all the gowns in preparation, I would have been enthralled. Unfortunately, McPhail chooses instead to focus on the women's emotional responses to their missing husbands, which gets bogged down as the story goes. Too much backstory, and the big secret that ties Constance and Alice together is extremely easy to see coming from about chapter two. So the mystery falls flat, and the repeated attempts to create tension around it are not effective since the reader already knows the outcome (it's very clear early on).

I found myself skimming a lot of the backstory bits, until I could get back to the descriptions of the dressmaking. And those parts are great. McPhail is an experienced sewist, which you can tell from the way she writes about design and the practicalities of fabric and stitching. When Alice and Constance are discussing the design of the gown they're making, there is life and spark to the story. I found it really interesting that they are basically upcycling a few gowns given to Constance by a richer friend, since she's now pinching pennies without a husband around. They cut them apart and even remove beading, saving the silk threads, to use all of these materials again in the final outfit. And the gown isn't a magical Cinderella thing, Alice lives with Constance for many weeks in order to work on this project, which also shows familiarity with dressmaking!

So I would say this is partially successful; there was obviously a lot of historical research in this story, which shows, and I wish there was more of that detail included in the story -- she could have used the setting much more intensely. Much of the story is focused on the interior lives of Constance and Alice, and it begins to drag in the middle. It wasn't utterly gripping, but enough to keep me reading all weekend to finish it up and see where she went with it. And the sewing details are perfect ;) 

Weekend Review: The Pink Suit

The Pink Suit / Nicole Mary Kelby
NY: Little Brown, c2014.
288 p.

I found this book in my library collection, and decided to give it a try wholly because of the sewing content. The plot revolves around an Irish seamstress, Kate, who works for an American couture house making clothes for Jackie Kennedy, including the infamous pink suit she was wearing when JFK was killed.

Now, I don't like political stories, especially not American hagiography, so I was hesitant about this one but gave it a fair shake.

My opinion? The sewing content is realistic, sensuously described and the workplace is also evoked with realism and was so interesting! The adoration of Jackie Kennedy was a bit much to take, and the story around the story -- the life of the seamstress in question, her family, romance, longing for home (Ireland) -- was not interesting to me at all.

So it's the New York boutique Chez Ninon, run by two elderly eccentric ladies, and Kate's traditional NY neighbourhood where they frown on her taking a ride in a convertible and think she's putting on airs by working in fashion and dressing well, that are the main contrast here. Jackie's unattainable fairy tale life is the dream, contrasted with the unhappy grind that Kate finds herself living.

The problem is I didn't really like Kate much, she was both dull and isolated, so there weren't many other characters to engage with. Her only interesting characteristic was her sewing skill, which was described and shown but not enough for me! And her romance with the local middle aged butcher was depressing; it was clear that she was going to give up her dreams of a fashion line of her own and the chance of going into a boutique with a coworker, in order to marry a butcher and spend her life as a housewife and butchery assistant. It reminded me of the story arc of another book I previously read in which the main character gives everything up for a man/a child as well -- The Dress in the Window -- and that one frustrated the heck out of me as well.

After all the potential of her fashion work in New York, Kate simply gives it up for a disappointing marriage to someone she kind of likes and they leave America altogether. So much for the American dream.