Anyone with even the mildest interest in clothing will enjoy this knowledgeable, readable account of a pivotal year in haute...
A young woman from the French provinces watches Chanel reinvent high fashion in an enjoyable second novel from Diliberto (I Am Madame X, 2003, etc.).
In early 1919, orphaned Isabelle Varlet leaves her hometown of Agen and travels to Paris, armed with a letter of introduction to Chanel from a local dressmaker praising her skill with a needle. “When I started work at Chanel Modes et Coutures, I joined a revolution,” Isabelle says. Women are cutting their hair and showing their ankles; Chanel’s sleek, unstructured clothes have the simplicity and ease they want. Lovingly detailed descriptions of the painstaking draping, cutting and hand-sewing that goes into each couture creation are more interesting than Isabelle’s personal life, which involves a not-terribly-exciting romance with a one-legged war veteran and some ferocious passes by wolfish male couturiers. Happily, most of the plot centers on rivalries within and outside of the Chanel workshop. Isabelle rises quickly to the rank of première (head seamstress and virtually an associate designer), but her position is threatened by a jealous coworker and the theft of her group’s toiles (master patterns) just before the all-important August 1919 unveiling of the collection with which Chanel hopes to cement her reputation as France’s greatest fashion designer. By far the most vivid character is Mademoiselle, as her employees call Chanel: imperious, capricious, utterly dedicated to her art yet also a shrewd businesswoman, a proto-feminist who tells Isabelle, “work and independence are what keep women young and attractive.” Around her swarm jealous rivals like Jean Patou, scheming subordinates and impossible clients, whose every arbitrary demand she expects her overworked staff to fulfill. Isabelle is nowhere near as colorful, but she’s a good observer who holds back the dressing-room curtains so readers can enjoy an insider’s peek at this rarified world.
Anyone with even the mildest interest in clothing will enjoy this knowledgeable, readable account of a pivotal year in haute couture.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-7432-8065-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
