The Wardrobe Department

 

The Wardrobe Department / Elaine Garvey
Edinburgh: Canongate, c2025.
231 p.

This is Elaine Garvey's debut novel, which I found serendipitously in my library's collection. It's the story of Mairead, a 22 yr old Irish woman who has left a suffocating home life to work at a small theatre in England. But the theatre isn't the dream life she was looking for - it's still just real life, a job with many attendant issues. 

She works in the wardrobe department, and the descriptions of the actual work are great - sewing up gloves, awkward fittings with actors they have crushes on, washing and pressing until all hours, sourcing stockings at sex shops for the cheapest options and so on. I loved this part of the book; it is so rare to find a book that goes into actual daily worklife, and manages to capture the every day nature of it, the way it makes up most of a life. And also the way that coworkers shape the day. Mairead works with two other young women, one posh and one more raucous and full of desire to live life. Their interactions are so realistic, and they help to shape Mairead's story. And her direct boss is tough but ultimately supportive. Some of the other characters are ones you'd like to throttle, though!

Mairead is awkward and introverted - she's not sure she fits in here but doesn't feel like she fits in at home either. But she still misses it and feels torn between two places. Then she has to go home for a funeral, and that part of the book is the real heart of the story. Her visit shows the reader the background for all the issues she's been having in London, her numbness, anxiety, constant worrying and so on. The family dynamics are finely drawn, between Mairead and her parents but also her wider family. There are some difficult moments in her life and that of her family that are hard to read about. 

But then there is a breakthrough in mother-daughter communication which shakes Mairead up, just as she is ready to board her plane back to London. And once there, she goes back to her daily round of work and home, but somehow her mother speaks through her in a key moment -- Mairead finds her steel -- and everything changes. Although much of the book has us following Mairead stuck in her life, the ending is hopeful, and I thought it ended on a high note. 

I really liked this one. If you enjoy slower paced character driven stories with a wonderful setting, you may also like it. Of course I also found the sewing content relatable and realistic, and appreciated the metaphors arising from stitching that appeared in other parts of the book.


And here's a nice interview with the author at the blog Word Herding, about her work in theatres and how it informed this book, if you want to learn more.

(review first appeared at FollowingTheThread)

Small Things Like These

 

Small Things Like These / Claire Keegan
NY: Grove Press, 2021, c2020
118 p.

This little book is already garnering praise from everywhere, so when I saw it in my library I checked it out right away. And I read it in one night - it's a very small novella, a holiday short story really, in that classic Christmas story vein. I will not be surprised to see a tv special made from this and played every year. 

It's 1985 in small town Ireland, where Bill Furlong is a coal merchant and father of 5 girls. He's worked his way up from a rocky beginning as a fatherless child to a stable, successful family man. But it's Christmas week & he is very busy keeping supplies up for his community during a cold snap. 

He's delivering a load to the Magdalen laundry very early in the morning and stumbles on something he wasn't supposed to see. And he has to weigh what he knows against his social status & the well-being of his wife and daughters. The nuns running the laundry are next door to the good Catholic school his daughters attend & hand in glove with the local church as well. The right thing to do may not be the same as the expedient thing to do. 

This small quiet novel is told in a placid, straightforward style which contrasts with the dilemma Bill faces. It's a slow revelation of everyday heroism and bravery in the face of societal norms. And as such, it's still very relevant today. The quiet round of Christmas markets and presents and baking and wishes in everyday life contrasts strongly with what is happening right up the road, and must be reconciled -- by Bill, at least. What you might do in a similar situation is a question that every reader is left with. 

While I wasn't quite as taken with this story as many others seem to be, I can still appreciate the moral questions that lie at the heart of it, and its refusal to wax sentimental over the holiday season. It gets to the core of what the Christmas spirit is meant to evoke, a shared humanity, which is not always an easy thing to live out.