The dressmaker's secret by Rosalie Ham
Picador, 2020. ISBN: 9781760982027.
(Age: Adult) Tilly, the dressmaker is back! She is in hiding in
Melbourne slaving away for the demanding Mrs Flock at the Salon
Mystique, her talents in dress design gaining favour as everyone
prepares for the grand social occasion of the 1953 coronation of the
new queen. But there are people searching for her - a mysterious man
in elegant clothes, a villainous welfare officer, and a whole cast
of angry, stupid, venomous people from that horrible country town
Dungatar.
The kindhearted cross-dressing Sergeant Farrat is there to help her
as always; he and other closet fashion lovers are a source of
humour, along with the whole crazy world of the Hippocampus Club. It
is an era when single mothers and homosexuals are reviled, and
female workers are exploited, but Ham deals with these issues in a
light-hearted melodramatic way. The characters are Dickensian
stereotypes and the action is farcical, it's all just a lot of fun.
More serious attention goes to the clothes!
Having seen the 2015 film The dressmaker starring Kate
Winslett, I knew to expect a comedy about revenge, but even so I
found it hard to pull the pieces together in this sequel without
having read the first book. There are frequent references to
unexplained secrets that really demand reading the books in order.
But I am sure that readers of The dressmaker will enjoy
finding out what happens to Tilly next.
Themes: Humour, Fashion, Cross-dressing, Revenge.
Helen Eddy