Review by Rachel Hamm
It’s the
early 1960s and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy is the style icon of the
decade. Even after some bad publicity
during her husband’s run for office (the amount of money she spent on
foreign-made clothes didn’t exactly go over well), she’s still the woman the
country looks to when determining fashion trends. And Kate is the lucky seamstress at the
fashionable copy-cat shop Chez Ninon who gets to make “The Wife’s” smart suits
and gorgeous dresses.
For Kate, a
single woman, an Irish immigrant, living in a quiet Catholic neighborhood in
northern Manhattan, the Wife is her passion.
She keeps clippings of the outfits she’s made for her. She copies the outfits for her sister, who is
the same size as the Wife. She gets the
opportunity of a lifetime when the Husband places a direct order through Chez
Ninon for a Chanel suit. The infamous
pink suit the Wife would be wearing when the Husband was assassinated.
As Kate
prepares the suit, she deals with personal troubles of her own. Falling in love and deciding if that is
enough to get married to fellow Irish Catholic Patrick Harris. Contemplating an offer to go into business
with her mentor and leave the shop she’s dedicated years to. Discovering her sister doesn’t actually like
having replicas of the Wife’s clothes.
Through it all, the suit grounds her while also allowing her to live out
a fantasy – one where the Wife is not an untouchable public figure, but the
girl from County Cork who isn’t all that different from Kate herself.
After
reading this, I felt like chastising myself for not reading more historical
fiction. The entire book was wonderfully
done. The period details were subtle and
accurate and made me want to grab Doc Brown’s Delorian and head back in
time. Everything was simpler, the world
slower, but fashion was having a revolution.
Kate loves
her work. She loves the fabrics and the
tiny stitches, and the way garments can be designed to hide the flaws our
bodies come by naturally. I found myself
really routing for Kate. She was
relatable in having this passion that made her a bit of an outcast in her
neighborhood, and at times within her own family.
Her
friend-turned-boyfriend, Patrick, is as adorable as possible. A sweet Irish butcher who loved his mam and
misses her now that she’s gone, does everything in his power to show Kate that
despite what everyone else may think, he loves her and celebrates her passion
for the Wife and the Suit (and whatever else she wants to be passionate about)
– all he asks is she take an interest in his passion as well. It’s a great message about love, which I
found surprising given the time period of the novel.
I don’t
dog-ear books. It’s just not something I
do. But there was one particular passage
of this book that HAD to be remembered.
Kate is thinking about her nephew and how he’ll be associated with her
unique ways.
Poor Little Mike, Kate
thought, but knew there were worse things in life than having an aunt who
didn’t always obey the rules – like having an aunt who mindlessly obeyed
them. What a frightful way to be.
Maybe this
struck me because I’m an aunt who doesn’t always follow the rules of how my
family thinks I should act. Or maybe
because it just seemed to sum up the entire book so well. Kate actually DOES do some mindless rule-following
at her job – coming in early and staying late to complete orders that
absolutely must be done – but throughout the story, we see her coming into her
own. Once she realizes that there are
people who see her as something undesirable, she kinda lets loose. She allows herself to be reckless. She becomes that person who doesn’t
mindlessly follow rules.
My one
complaint about the book is that, because of the genre, it is light on
dialogue. This makes it move along a
little more slowly than I prefer. I
didn’t get “sucked in.” But I really
enjoyed the story and the cast of characters and most definitely appreciated
the way the story was told. The actual
pink suit is now an icon. The (fictional) Pink Suit could very well become a classic.
About the Author:
Brought up in Florida,
Kelby has worked as a reporter, editor and educator.
Initially a playwright,
she later turned to novels and short stories. She is the author of Murder at the Bad Girl’s Bar and
Grill, Whale Season, In the Company of Angels, and Theater of the Stars.
Her short stories have appeared in many publications including Zoetrope All-Story Extra, One
Story, Minnesota Monthly, Verb, and The Mississippi Review. One was recorded by actress Joanne
Woodward for the NPR
CD Travel Tales, and included in New
Stories from the South: Best of 2006.
Kelby
has been the recipient of a Bush Artist Fellowship in Literature, the Heekin
Group Foundation’s James Fellowship for the Novel, both a Florida and Minnesota
State Arts Board Fellowship in fiction, two Jerome Travel Study Grants, and a
Jewish Arts Endowment Fellowship. She was named "Outstanding Southern
Artist" by The Southern Arts Federation and her work has been translated
into several languages. She has been a Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Award finalist
for fiction three times and placed twice in the Nelson Algren Award for the
Short Story.
Connect
with the author at:
