Was very disappointed in this book as a choice for the Booker shortlist. It isn't a BAD book but it really doesn't stand out from the crowd for me. It felt dated and not terribly relevant. Got to the end and thought "Yeah, well so what?"

And what do you reckon to the husband getting snuffed out in such a ridiculous way on the honeymoon? All suspension of belief withered away. ( )

In this coming-of-age novel, young Vivian Kovacs, a Hungarian immigrant living with her parents in London in the 1970’s, struggles to escape her sheltered existence. Believing the outside world to be unsafe, Vivian’s parents “chose to be mice-people,” planning their lives around the TV schedule and leaving their flat only when absolutely required. Vivian rejects her parents’ fear, engages with the world, and invents a colorful identity for herself through the eclectic clothes she wears. As if the symbolism isn’t already apparent, Vivian explains:

"The clothes you wear are a metamorphosis. They change you from the outside in. … A million imperfections mar us. … So the most you can do is put on a new dress, a different tie."

Most of Vivian’s story is told through flashbacks and stories-within-stories. This nesting of narratives, while structurally impressive, imposes a significant distance between the reader and the emotional core of the story. This backward-looking construct has a muting effect on the action, as if everything happens under cover of a deep fog.

This character-driven novel lacks a protagonist strong enough to sustain the momentum. On the one hand, Vivian is a mousy introvert, but, on the other hand, she develops a love for stylish clothes and marries a “self-confident” and “rather shallow” man who resembles a “young English lord in a white open-neck shirt.” These inconsistencies never coalesce into a coherent identity. Nevertheless, Grant’s undeniable skill as a writer results in a mildly enjoyable book, one that would’ve been terrible in less masterful hands.

This review also appears on my literary blog Literary License. ( )

I enjoyed this book ...up to a point. I found the narrative wandered a bit and I didn't care deeply about what happened to the central character, Vivien. Having said that, the characters were beautifully illustrated and there was a true insight in to 70s London ...both the good and bad times. ( )

I really loved this book with its sharp, incisive character studies & underlying exploration of how a wardrobe can reveal & conceal.

The main character, Vivien, embarks on a search for her family history by talking with her father's estranged brother, Sandor, once convicted of being a slum lord. Sandor is a complex character - a slum lord, a pimp, a survivor of slave labor camps during WWII, an escapee from communist Hungary. He is by turns "the face of evil" & the soul of human kindness. I loved all the complex dualities captured in his character.

Equally interesting is the underlying story of London in the '70's - punk music & the rise of the National Front. It's interesting to think about how frightening the skinhead movement must have been to those who had survived the first go-round with Fascism.

This book is well written & literary without being overly conscious of its craft. The story is well-told, the characters fully realized and multidimensional. & the clothes - the joys to be had in costuming & re-costuming & all of the ways that clothes express who we are or who we wish we could be. ( )

This book was mesmerizing. It caught my attention from the beginning and never let it go. Vivien had led a sheltered life in London as the daughter of Hungarian refugees who never talked about the past or where they came from, and rejected the only relative to ever show up at their door, her uncle Sandor, saying only that he was a very bad man. When Vivien is jobless and grieving after losing her husband on their honeymoon, she meets her uncle in a park and agrees to work for him, transcribing his life story into a book, but she doesn't tell him who she really is. And thus she learns about her own history, and all the things her parents would never tell her. The book reads like a mystery and a memoir and the characters are all fascinating and complex, and nothing is ever black and white. Highly recommended. ( )