The Dressmaker by Kate Alcott

Publisher: Random House Audio
Publish Date: February 21, 2012
Format: Audio
Discs: 9
ISBN: 978 0307970121

Tess, an aspiring seamstress, thinks she’s had an incredibly lucky break when she is hired by famous designed Lady Lucile Duff Gordon to be a personal maid on the Titanic’s doomed voyage.  Once on board, Tess catches the eye of two men, one a roughly-hewn but kind sailor and the other an enigmatic Chicago millionaire.  But on the fourth night, disaster strikes.

Amidst the chaos and desperate urging of two very different suitors, Tess is one of the last people allowed on a lifeboat.  Tess’s sailor also manages to survive unharmed, witness to Lady Duff Gordon’s questionable actions during the tragedy.  Others – including the gallant Midwestern tycoon – are not so lucky.

On dry land, rumours about the survivors being to circulate, and Lady Duff Gordon quickly becomes the subject of media scorn and later, the hearings on the Titanic.  Set against a historical tragedy but told from a completely fresh angle, The Dressmaker is an atmospheric delight filled with all the period’s glitz and glamour, all the raw feelings of a national tragedy and all the contradictory emotions of young love.

My Thoughts

I was somewhat disappointed with this novel.  While I love everything Titanic, I just found this story fell flat.  The majority of the story takes place after the sinking of the ship and the tragedy it entailed with actually hearing manuscripts that took place.

The premise of the book follows Tess, and her journey aboard the ship as Lady Duff Gordon's maid and as she stands by her during the aftermath and the trials involved with the inquest.  What was disappointing is that the story had very little to do with Tess and her dressmaking.  I assumed with a title like The Dressmaker that the majority of the story would be about dressmaking.

The character of Lady Duff Gordon was extremely shallow and conceded, and later found out that her part of the story is based  on actual events...she really was that shallow. While Tess was a fictional character many others mentioned in the novel were real people.  While I always find Titanic fascinating,  this one just didn't do it for me.  It was too blah for my liking.

My Rating: «««

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The reviews made here are my personal opinion. I’m not being paid to review any of these books. I am by no means a professional book reviewer or editor.  I do this for the love of books.

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

Publisher: Harper Audio

Publish Date: June 12, 2012

Format: Audio

Discs: 10

ISBN: 978 0062268365

The story beings in 1962.  On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks on over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat.  She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying.

And the story beings again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio’s back lot – searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier.

What unfolds is a dazzling, yet deeply human, roller coaster of a novel, spanning fifty years and nearly as many lives.  From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Walter introduces us to the tangled lives of a dozen unforgettable characters: the starstruck Italian innkeeper and is long-lost love; the heroically preserved producer who once brought them together and is idealistic young assistant; the army veteran turned fledgling novelist and the rakish Richard Burton himself, whose appetites set the whole story in motion – along with the husbands and wives, lovers and dreamers, superstars and losers, who populate their world in the decades that follow.

My Thoughts

Well, all I really have to say about this is that it is one hot mess of a book.  Like the description states the story unveils a dozen characters...a dozen!  And not only that, but each of them have a point of view in the story telling.  This book is all over the map.  Every chapter is told by a different character, during a different time period in a different city.  I listened to this on audio, and while I found the narration enjoyable to listen to I found myself either lost in the story and had no idea what was happening or bored out of my mind from the rambling. 

There is not one character that is likable, all of them drove me crazy.  I can't think of one thing that I took away from this novel or that I found memorable.  I'm not sure how a novel with so many story lines happened to come to a neat and tidy end in no time flat.  If felt like the story was still unfolding then all of a sudden...The End.  Like at the end of a movie when it's over then they show a still picture with a character update.  Everything started with such promise, why couldn't the story have just continued on with Pasquael and the beautiful setting of Italy?

2 stars for the narration of Edorado Ballerini.

My Rating: ««

Buy it Now!

The reviews made here are my personal opinion. I’m not being paid to review any of these books. I am by no means a professional book reviewer or editor.  I do this for the love of books.