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  • The Dressmaker

  • A Novel
  • Written by: Rosalie Ham
  • Narrated by: Rachel Griffiths
  • Length: 7 hrs and 46 mins
  • 4.3 out of 5 stars (7 ratings)

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The Dressmaker cover art

The Dressmaker

Written by: Rosalie Ham
Narrated by: Rachel Griffiths
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Publisher's Summary

A darkly satirical novel of love, revenge, and 1950s haute couture - now a major motion picture starring Kate Winslet, Judy Davis, Liam Hemsworth, and Hugo Weaving.

After 20 years spent mastering the art of dressmaking at couture houses in Paris, Tilly Dunnage returns to the small Australian town she was banished from as a child. She plans only to check on her ailing mother and leave. But Tilly decides to stay, and though she is still an outcast, her lush, exquisite dresses prove irresistible to the prim women of Dungatar.

Through her fashion business, her friendship with Sergeant Farrat - the town’s only policeman, who harbors an unusual passion for fabrics - and a budding romance with Teddy, the local football star whose family is almost as reviled as hers, she finds a measure of grudging acceptance. But as her dresses begin to arouse competition and envy in town, causing old resentments to surface, it becomes clear that Tilly’s mind is set on a darker design: Exacting revenge on those who wronged her, in the most spectacular fashion.

©2015 Rosalie Ham (P)2015 Penguin Audio

What the critics say

“It’s clear we’re visiting a small 1950s town not of history but as imagined by Tim Burton: the gothic, polarized world of Edward Scissorhands... Ham has real gifts as a writer of surfaces and pictures, bringing Tilly’s frocks to surprising, animated life.” (The New York Times Book Review)

“The book’s true pleasures involve the way Rosalie Ham has small-town living down pat...she channels welcome shades of British novelist Angela Carter’s sly, funny, and wickedly Gothic adornments...Blunt, raw and more than a little fantastical, the novel exposes both the dark and the shimmering lights in our human hearts.” (The Boston Globe)

“With the retribution of Carrie, the quirkiness of Edward Scissorhands, and the scandal of Desperate Housewives, this novel will lend its cinematic qualities to the big screen later this year.” (Booklist)

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Good Read

Wish I had read the book before the movie, think I would have enjoyed it a little more. I enjoyed how it gave more back story to the characters and Tilly’s choices that I saw in the movie

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