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. ( )

Using clothes as a metaphor, the author tells the story of Vivien, born to reclusive, secretive parents who, as she learns through her Uncle Sandor, escaped to England from Budapest during Nazi persecution.

Sandor, a somewhat sleazy man whom her father vehemently casts aside, hires Vivien to write his life story. And, through the unfolding of the tale, Vivien realizes the complications of relationships and the ties that bind.

Set in the 1970's, when once again fascism raised its ugly snake head in London, Vivien is aware of the fear and terror her family previously experienced and the terrible memories that this band of thugs can elicit.

I give this book a 3.5 star rating. It held my interest, but it was a slow go at various points. ( )

http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/200... ( )

I probably needed to delve more into this book when reading it - but my reading was disjointed so I never fully understood the clothes metaphor, however much coverage the clothes got. I noticed Grant was fond of giving her narrator similes, but I never really felt involved in Vivien's ups and downs - I just didn't find myself engaged with this book. I didn't feel any great insights - she has an abortion and then feels a sense of guilt. She's lacked confidence but gains some. She's misjudged her uncle but in the end I felt towards her much as I felt towards the narrator in Jhabvala's 'Heat and Dust', having some sense of empathy but not sharing any mindset. ( )

Here's the deal: I liked it, but I didn't love it. I thought it was good, but not great.

The narrator of this story is Vivien Kovacs, the only child of two refugees who left Hungary when the tide of anti-Semitism began to rise and make itself obvious. Ervin and Berta (her parents) as described by Vivien, were "mice-people", who laid low in an apartment, never caused any trouble, didn't get involved in anything outside the apartment which other than Ervin's work, seemed to be their entire world. Vivien knows nothing about her parents' past: has no clue about grandparents, or much about her parents' life before coming to London. What she does know is that her father has a brother, one Sandor Kovacs, who Vivien sees first at a young age. That meeting did not last long, since Ervin throws him out of the house. It turns out that Sandor is the proverbial black sheep of the family, and for Vivien's sake, Ervin and Berta never discussed him. However, television news reports painted him as a heinous criminal, and so Vivien knows something's up. It is only years later that she learns about the unspoken past, but the price of learning comes at a cost. I absolutely will not say more about the plot, because it will spoil it for anyone who decides to read this book, and because it needs to be unfolded in bits and pieces to really understand the story. There are several themes explored in this book, especially the notion that morality is relative, depending on perspective. Also, there is the question of what our clothes tell others, but also what our clothes say about us to ourselves. The idea of the importance of the past in our present is also explored.

As I said, I liked it and would definitely recommend it. The author's writing is very good, the characters are well drawn, and the story is good enough to keep you turning pages (in my case, pretty much through the night). ( )

A very absorbing read. I agree that I couldn't relate closely to the narrator. Perhaps this is as a result of her alienation from her surroundings and the people she encounters. I also found the concealment of identity (or the pretence of it) to be a bit conrived, but I did enjoy the read and felt informed as a result. ( )