Rob's Reviews > The Dressmaker

Booker shortlisted, this fourth novel from Beryl Bainbridge does represent her maturing craft. Wartime Liverpool provides an excellent backcloth and I was reminded of Colm Toibin's much later Brooklyn as well as the films of Terence Davies - both must clearly have been influenced by Bainbridge.

It's a cleverly plotted tale for which the only bum note is a pretty outlandish ending - events which are hinted at in an opening chapter that appears out of time sequence, a device the author deployed in her previous book, Harriet Said . There are occasional jabs of darkness including one character's admiration for Hitler's dress sense and a sense that Bainbridge is looking on as a 1970s sophisticate, tampering with her simple character's lives.