Set in 1944, following the devastating WWII bombings of England, The Dressmaker is the story of a small, working-class family and their vicious cycle of mutual sabotage.
Wartime Liverpool is a place of ration books and jobs in munitions factories. Rita, living with her two aunts Nellie and Margo, is emotionally naive and withdrawn. When she meets Ira, a GI, at a neighbour’s party she falls in love as much with the idea of life as a GI bride as with the man himself.
But Nellie and Margo are not so blind . . .
‘A novel in which ignorance, repression, narrow-mindedness can lead only to tragedy.’ The Guardian
Marvellous Therapy
I first met Beryl Bainbridge in 1982, when I went to interview her friend and editor Anna Haycraft for Books & Bookmen. I was later to discover that Beryl practically lived at the Haycrafts’ house...
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