For years I read classics where women wore long, rustling gowns, kid gloves, silk slippers, lockets, and bonnets: hence my modern green tights faux pas after reading D. H. Lawrence’s Women in Love in the ’90s. Gudrun, a sultry artist, wears green tights with her artistic, original dresses. And so I bought a pair of green tights, thinking they would complement my latest outfit, a long green sweater with shoulder pads over a green plaid skirt. The outfit was cute sans green tights, and I never wore them again. But why did I trust Lawrence’s fashion sense? Memo: Male writers are not fashion designers!
This year I’ve read five new books in an effort to expand my fashion sense. No, that’s not it: I’ve simply decided to branch out into the lit of the 21st century.
Below are the five new books I’ve read this year, with a rating, the author’s views on fashion if applicable, and a link to my posts on the books.
FIVE FASHIONABLE NEW BOOKS
The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper, by Roland Allen
***** Great!
Notebooks never go out of style. The author takes us from tablets to scrolls, wax and wood to papyrus and paper, illuminated manuscripts to the commonplace book. He traces the history of Moleskine notebooks. (Barnes and Noble is the largest American distributor of Moleskines, which are the best-selling product of a company in Italy.) While reading Allen’s intriguing book, I acquired a new glossy notebook in which I plan to write a sentence a day. So far, I have written six. (Hurray!)
Green Dot, by Madeleine Gray **** V. Good!
This Australian novel is sharp, funny, and sad: it may seem too light to some readers, but I regret that it didn’t make the Women’s Prize longlist. The witty narrator, Hera, a desperate woman in her mid-twenties, realizes she cannot go to school forever and takes a job as an online comments editor for a newspaper. It is a tedious but very funny job, and the best scenes are her comedic yet painful reactions to the repetitive absurdity. She makes the mistake of falling in love with her married boss, and spends so much of her time waiting for him to call on her cell phone that she is exactly like the narrator of Dorothy Parker’s classic story, “The Telephone Call.”
I am hazy about the fashion, but at one point a friend advises her to wear a “naughty little skirt” to get her boss/boyfriend’s attention. Hera snaps that she has no naughty little skirt. At that point she still has self-respect.
Hummingbird, by Sandro Veronesi
**** V. Good
I recall no fashion in this intense novel about a dysfunctional Italian family, but the protagonist and his brother do inherit their parents’ vintage ‘60s furniture, which happens to be worth a lot of money. There is much plastic and steel and it sounds uncomfortable! I do recall this style of furniture. Very sharp.
Glorious Exploits, by Fardia Lennon
***** Great!
The only fashion in this brilliant tragicomic novel, set during the fifth century B.C., would be the costumes worn in Lampo and Gelon’s production of two Greek tragedies, with Athenian prisoners as actors. Not for everyday wear, but the masks might come in handy after a sleepless night.
The Cemetery of Lost Stories, by Julia Alvarez
**** V. Good!
I don’t remember much about fashion in this novel, though the groundskeeper of the cemetery wears old faded clothes. One other fashion detail: Alma, the writer-heroine, orders her sisters to dress up to attend a meeting with the lawyer who, after two years, has finally settled their parents’ estate. Fashion is a means for women to gain respect, Alma informs her sisters. A short deconstruction of the role of women’s clothing?
DID I ENJOY THESE BOOKS?
All of these were entertaining, super-fast reads. Why is that? Is it because the sentences are shorter than those of Henry James?
Maybe it is because they are written in the vernacular. And they portray a strange new world at odds with the worlds of my favorite Victorians.
I hope to find some other good new books to read this year.
Recommendations appreciated.
Have you noticed any strange or wonderful fashions worn by fictional characters?