Helpful Score: 5
The Dressmaker is the story of a fictional young woman (Tess) with a big talent and big dreams. She gains a coveted spot on the Titanic by talking her way into a job with real life character Lady Duff Gordon.
The boat sinks. Some survive, most don't.
Lady Duff Gordon and her husband, other real life character Molly Brown, Tess and other fictional characters survive. The main plot of the book is the fall-out and aftermath of the Titanic's sinking. Real life character US Senator (Michigan) William Alden Smith realizes immediately that things went disastrously (& possibly preventably) wrong and launches immediate hearings.
All of this is fascinating & worthy of a book. And the author does a credible job with her plot. I enjoyed the book and I would recommend it; but throughout most of the book (as other reviewers have noted), the characters were rather one-dimensional; character development was not fully explained and there were some "leaps of faith" the reader should not have had to make.
But then, within the last 50 pages or so, the real theme of the book emerges. This is a book about people & how people react to various situations - from a young woman who must choose between two men who love her to a woman who cannot see beyond her own self-interest to how people react to the unspeakable tragedy and unimaginable fear of having their world sink literally right out from under them. Its easy to cast stones with the perfection of 20/20 hindsight, but how would we react? What would our motivation be? How concerned would we be for our fellow man? How could the very natural desire to survive be seen as cold & selfish?
Different perspectives, different motivations, the assumptions and interpretations of others' behaviors that may or may not be correct and the resulting damage such assumptions can cause - these are the weighty themes that subtly and cleverly come to light by the end of the book.
"See how we piece our stories together? To redeem ourselves, I suppose."
Thus says one of the secondary characters. And isn't it the truth? Set against the backdrop of a horrific event we can read about, but never really understand, we are faced with the blunt fact of "perspective."
The book, although interesting, was rather flat until things started to really come together and the overall theme developed. The book will stay with me for awhile as I think about my own life and choices and interpretations and judgments and assumptions.
The boat sinks. Some survive, most don't.
Lady Duff Gordon and her husband, other real life character Molly Brown, Tess and other fictional characters survive. The main plot of the book is the fall-out and aftermath of the Titanic's sinking. Real life character US Senator (Michigan) William Alden Smith realizes immediately that things went disastrously (& possibly preventably) wrong and launches immediate hearings.
All of this is fascinating & worthy of a book. And the author does a credible job with her plot. I enjoyed the book and I would recommend it; but throughout most of the book (as other reviewers have noted), the characters were rather one-dimensional; character development was not fully explained and there were some "leaps of faith" the reader should not have had to make.
But then, within the last 50 pages or so, the real theme of the book emerges. This is a book about people & how people react to various situations - from a young woman who must choose between two men who love her to a woman who cannot see beyond her own self-interest to how people react to the unspeakable tragedy and unimaginable fear of having their world sink literally right out from under them. Its easy to cast stones with the perfection of 20/20 hindsight, but how would we react? What would our motivation be? How concerned would we be for our fellow man? How could the very natural desire to survive be seen as cold & selfish?
Different perspectives, different motivations, the assumptions and interpretations of others' behaviors that may or may not be correct and the resulting damage such assumptions can cause - these are the weighty themes that subtly and cleverly come to light by the end of the book.
"See how we piece our stories together? To redeem ourselves, I suppose."
Thus says one of the secondary characters. And isn't it the truth? Set against the backdrop of a horrific event we can read about, but never really understand, we are faced with the blunt fact of "perspective."
The book, although interesting, was rather flat until things started to really come together and the overall theme developed. The book will stay with me for awhile as I think about my own life and choices and interpretations and judgments and assumptions.
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