THE DRESSMAKER

Debut novelist Oberbeck takes fashion ever-so-seriously in this painfully earnest romance about a dressmaking genius who falls in love with a client who becomes his muse.

In a quiet village just outside Paris, Claude Reynaud carries on his family’s tailoring tradition, his routine enlivened by after-school visits from his three nephews. A talented dressmaker in his 40s, Claude has begun to develop a clientele of Parisian society women. One day he is hired to design the wedding dress for Valentine de Verlay, a beautiful young woman with perfect proportions and a swan neck (think Audrey Hepburn). Claude, whose wife Rose-Marie deserted him eight years earlier, is immediately smitten. And for no reason apparent to the reader, Valentine seems attracted to mousy Claude. Valentine and Claude steal a kiss at her engagement party. Then, at a rendezvous at a lake resort, they have sex so gauzy it seems downright chaste. Although Valentine claims she is drawn to Claude, when her fiancé, the loutish Victor, loses his job, she decides her duty is to marry him. Meanwhile, Claude is hired by a big fashion house in Paris, where he becomes the toast of the town based largely on his design for Valentine’s wedding dress. Having heard of his growing success, the avaricious Rose-Marie reclaims her place as his wife until Claude bribes her into a divorce. Valentine, now married and pregnant, moves with Victor to New York. Soon Claude travels there to see the spring fashion shows and of course runs into Valentine. Victor has become a drunken bully. After he hits Claude in a jealous rage, Claude realizes he has no future with Valentine. He returns to Paris and, after a chapter of gratuitous tragedy, takes up his life of design with new resolve.

None of the sentiments here ring true; worse, the carefully described clothes sound dated and drab.