The Women in Black

A brief, easy-to-read book that is brilliant in containing so much within its 200 pages. The story focuses on several women of varying ages who all work in a large department store selling women's frocks during the Christmas-time sales in Sydney, Australia. These are the "women in black" as the saleswomen must wear a black dress provided by the store. With wit and subtle humor, the author cleverly portrays the women in their various life stages from young and innocent high school graduate just working temporarily, to twenties girls on the hunt for husbands, to a middle-aged married cosmopolitan émigré from Serbia. What makes this book successful is how the author effortlessly portrays the longings, the hopes, and fears of these women show more with spare and sparkling prose that captures various personalities, humor, and intelligence. Additionally, the male characters are also rendered as individual personalities. This is an upbeat, satisfying novel that I recommend when you're looking for something clever and entertaining. show less

A Facebook friend recommended this, saying that if you liked Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, you’ll like this. Since I liked that book very much, I got it from the library. Blurbs by two writers I like a lot, Hilary Mantel and Jane Gardam, were encouraging. I liked it a lot. It’s about a group of women who work in a big department store in Sydney. The main character is Lisa (dropping her original name, Lesley, for the first time) who’s waiting for her exam results and has taken her first job. She’d like to go to university but her father is against it; she and her mother are in cahoots to get around him. At the store she meets the sophisticated Magda, a former displaced person who sells the highest priced gowns. Another show more saleswoman, Fay, is also taken into Magda’s circle with charming results. A third saleswoman’s joyless marriage undergoes a change. Everything ends in a perfect and believable way.
It’s written in a dry, subtle style with little funny touches. I soon realized I need my own copy and ordered some other novels by St. John. show less

This charming novel, set at Christmas in a sophisticated department store in Sydney, Australia in the late 1950s, revolves around a small cast of women who work in the cocktail frock department. There isn't all that much of a plot, but it's just interesting to see their different lives and their struggles. I love this camera-like snapshot of the time and place -- it was fun to compare the Sydney I remember from the early 80s with the 1950s version (written in the 1990s), although I don't think you have to have ever been to Sydney to love this story. Subtle, lovely writing, interesting and unique characters, and a touch of humour made this a fabulous book that I was always happy to sit down and enjoy. Unfortunately, it appears to be out show more of print, but I was lucky to run across a used copy.

I must say, I've never read a book that used the word "frock" so many times. Here in Canada, we use some British terms and some US terms, but "frock" is one that we use only ironically. I was baffled and amused at the dress sizes, which had been replaced by standard numbers before I got to Oz:

"Patty Williams's frock was an SSW as we know, whereas Fay Baines was an SW, but Miss Jacobs was a perfect OSW, especially around the bust." After running into people being referred to by their dress size and continuing to puzzle, my friend Google steered me to an Australian vintage clothing website that explained:

XXSSW = Extra, extra slim small woman.
XSSW = Extra slim small woman.
SSW = Slim small woman.
SW = Small woman.
W = Woman.
XW = Extra woman.
SOS = Small(?) outsized
OS = Outsized.
XOS = Extra outsized.
etc

Wow. That's bizarre. Still not sure what those terms mean, but I get the idea. No idea what size I'd be.

Recommended for: readers who like charming books and don't need a lot of action or car chases. show less

Oh, how I welcomed a book about the lives of working class women living their daily lives which sometimes play out in the department store in 1950s Sydney, Australia. Instead I had to take in a very shallow telling of stories spoiled by St.John's infatuation with her thesaurus and a sort of attention deficit that would not allow her to expand the plot behind each character for more than a page or two. How this book has earned high praise I do not understand. It becomes adapted for film and the title is changed to "Ladies" in Black -why? For whom is that title more palatable?

The New York Times perfectly describes The Women in Black by Madeleine St. John as a love letter to old fashioned department stores. This is a story meant to entertain and uplift as one reads of the women who work in the ladies cocktail and model dress department of Goode’s Department Store in Sydney, Australia. Each woman has issues that are keeping them from being happy. Patty is married to a rather insensitive man and has just about given up on her dream to have children. Singleton Fay is tired of parties and dating and longs to settle down with that one man who will take her seriously, Lisa, who works as a temporary salesgirl, hides her real name of Leslie, and pins her hopes on winning a scholarship to university as her father show more does not believe in higher education for women. Then there is the fabulous Magda, who operates the exclusive salon and longs to open a shop of her own

The story unfolds over the six weeks of the Christmas shopping season during the late 1950s. When I was a teenager I worked in a small local department store and reading about Goode’s brought back many fond memories. Although the story moves slowly, I was totally drawn in by the innocence of the times and the sly humor of the women. Like the simple black dresses that the clerks have to wear at work, The Women in Black is simply charming, witty and hopeful. show less

I went in thinking this was going to be a bunch of women being catty to each other, and/or a funny-but-mournful study of how oppressive women's lives were—kind of a mid-century Aussie Dawn Powell. But it was actually none of that. Rather, it was sweet and funny and quite charming, lightweight but not dumb. And just the thing to read after four fairly serious nonfiction books in a row. This was unexpected (I can't even remember where I got the recommendation) and fun.

The titular Women in Black (Patty, Fay, Magda, and Lisa) work in the cocktail dress section of a department store in Sydney, Australia, in the 1950s. Patty longs for children with her taciturn husband; Fay longs for a man who will marry her; and Lisa longs to grow up. Magda, a Slovenian immigrant married to Hungarian Stefan, is content, and secure enough to help Lisa on her way to adulthood, and Fay on her way to marriage.

Quotes

...she was tired of the whole futile merry-go-round. And what was worse than this, much, much worse, was that there was no other merry-go-round she could step onto; it was this one to which she was apparently condemned, whether she liked it or not, and now she did not, and there was not a damned thing she could show more do about it. (Fay, 42)

"If you only knew what being a grown-up can be like, you wouldn't want to do it any faster than you have to." (Lisa/Lesley's mom, 99)

"I'll tell you this. No one understands men. We don't understand them, and they don't understand themselves." (Patty's mom, 105)

"Things are not all for the best, in the best of all possible worlds, as we know, but I think on the whole that a modicum of happiness is occasionally possible for the luckiest of us." (Stefan at New Year's, 131)

She didn't want to have to pretend anything: when you're alone, you needn't pretend, need you? Although, of course, sometimes you do: sometimes the lies you tell yourself are worse than the ones you tell other people. Now how can that be? (Patty, 156) show less