The Dressmaker

By: Rosalie Ham

Scott County Library paperback 275 pages

Published: 2000

Genre: historic realistic fiction

I am surprised at how many post-it notes I have sticking out of this book. I may have to skip blogging about each one! I saw a few YouTube clips of the movie made based on this book. I requested both the book and the movie from the library and got them quickly, along with a number of other titles! I wanted to read the book before watching the movie and I think that was a good call. The story went places I didn't expect based on the clips I've seen and it gets pretty dark in places.

Overall, it's a look at small town life and how people behave. Many of the people in 1950s Dungatar, Australia are written as very distinctive characters. There were just so many of them it got hard to follow at times! So many of them were so awful, not just to protagonist Tilly Dunnage, but just as humans in general. Stop reading here if you don't want spoilers! I've finished the book and have watched the movie, so I'm going to include info that you may want to discover for yourself. (The movie was slightly less "dark" than the book; but I recommend both. Ham's writing is quite good and the movie is well-done.)

My favorite parts were toward the end when Tilly and her mom Molly had a heart-to-heart. I wish they'd been able to come to terms with the past sooner! I liked Sergeant Farrat and his love of fine fabrics. 

Page 37: Tilly placed an apologetic hand, lighter than pollen, on Mrs. Almanac's cold, stony shoulder. Irma smiled. "Percival says God is responsible for everything."

She used to have a lot of falls, which left her with a black eye or a cut lip. Over the years, as her husband ground to a stiff and shuffling old man, her injuries ceased.

 

Mr. Almanac seemed creepy enough looking through other people's photos and passing judgment, but this line about his wife's injuries chilled my blood. Sweet little Irma, being a devoted wife, dealing with pain. . . how dare he act as though he is God's instrument. What an awful man!

Page 81: The quiet, dull drone of the radiogram wound through the house.

 

There were a few places where "radiogram" was mentioned. It made me think of a medical device, but I knew it was referencing an actual radio. It just made me giggle a bit.

 

Page 87 - He'd lathered raw duck egg into his hair and snotty streaks of it slid down his forehead, merging at the end of his white eyebrows with the aloe vera pulp face mask.

 

Sergeant Farrat is luxuriating in his bath, but the author's description in this sentence amused me. I thought about including the entire paragraph, but resisted. The "snotty streaks" of egg was a visual worth noting.

Page 88: He turned the catalogue and pushed it towards her. She looked down at the pattern, her chin receding into her neck.

"I need you to write down for me in plain English what these abbreviations really mean." He leaned to her ear and whispered, "Code. I'm trying to de-code a message from HQ. Top secret, but I know you're good at secrets."

 

Beulah was such an incredible pain-in-the-you-know-what and a huge busybody. Sergeant Farrat's true desire to understand the knitting pattern was hidden in his ridiculous request to her.

Page 89: Ruth stood by her electric kettle steaming open a fat letter addressed to Tilly Dunnage.

Ugh. Most of the people in this town are so reprehensible. They were so incredibly rude to Tilly and Molly (and the McSwineys) yet they themselves were the dishonorable ones.

Page 103: When she went inside she found Molly had dismantled her sewing machine entirely. It took her three days to find all the parts and put them back together.

"Mad" Molly's behaviors would have driven anyone else crazy, but Tilly rolled with it. So did Teddy McSwiney when he started spending time with Tilly.

Page 107: "Most poems are too long; that one wasn't."

William should have known Gertrude wasn't the "one" for him when she responded this way to him reading a Shakespearean sonnet and asking what she liked about it.

Page 112: Myrtle stood still, up against the wall. He walked backwards looking at her with his devil eyes. Myrtle knew what he was going to do, it was his favourite. He put his head down like a bull and ran ran ran at her as fast as he could, head first at her tummy, like a bull charging.

 

This flashback scene comes much earlier in the book than in the movie. In the movie, the question of "did Tilly murder Stewart Pettyman" is a central plot point. The movie also went places the book did not. This scene in the school playground showed Stewart's nastiness. Tilly stepping aside to prevent her own pain and injury are not murder; he killed himself by running into a brick wall. She was ten years old and treated like a criminal!

 

Page  114: But William was always overcome and would shove the entire egg into his mouth quickly, gorging himself, and be left both satisfied, and strangely not.

I love how the author compares his childhood habit of eating a chocolate egg to his adult consumption of his wife. The idea of being both satisfied and not satisfied . . .

Page 126: "We've several Gestetnered copies . . . "

I had to look this one up! (Though I understood from context that it was like a photocopy, I was curious.) A Gestetner is a stencil duplicator developed in 1881. It's basically a mimeograph machine!

Page 128: 

This was the second time in the book that a word was divided between two lines without a dash. (See "table" on lines 3 and 4.) I'm always baffled by an editing process that allows things like this through. 

 

 

 

Page 129: "O'course," said Hamish, "it all started to go wrong when man domesticated crops so there was a need to protect the crop and to gather in groups, build walls to stave off hungry neoliths."

"No," said Septimus, "the wheel sank humanity the deepest."

I was amused by these men discussing the state of humanity during their poker game.

Page 182: She felt sick - bile rose in the back of her throat and her body ached from crying. She was exhausted, but her mind raced with venom and hate for herself and the people of Dungatar. She'd prayed to a God she didn't believe in to come and take her away.

Oh, this broke my heart. Poor Tilly! So much heartbreak and sorrow. I wish she had believed in God and found healing in Him. Teddy's brother Barney was a bright spot in this town of awful people.

Pages 216-217: Oh, another heartbreaking scene. Molly, Mr. Almanac, Sergeant Farrat, Tilly . . . and the end of all things starting here.