Book Review - The Clothes on Their Backs by Linda Grant

Synopsis: In a red-brick mansion block near the Marylebone Road, Vivien, a sensitive, bookish girl, grows up sealed off from both past & present by her timid refugee parents. Then a glamorous uncle appears, in a mohair suit, with a diamond watch on his wrist & a girl in a leopard-skin hat on his arm. Why is Uncle Sandor so violently unwelcome in her parents' home? Vivien wants to know.

This is a story about survival - both everyday & heroic - & a young woman who discovers the complications, even betrayals, that inevitably accompany the fierce desire to live.

First Line: "This morning, for the first time in many years, I passed the shop on Seymour Street."

Random Quote: "Until I was ten I was completely unaware that I had a relative."

Review: I really loved this book with its sharp, incisive character studies & underlying exploration of how a wardrobe can reveal & conceal.

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The main character, Vivien, embarks on a search for her family history by talking with her father's estranged brother, Sandor, once convicted of being a slum lord. Sandor is a complex character - a slum lord, a pimp, a survivor of slave labor camps during WWII, an escapee from communist Hungary. He is by turns "the face of evil" & the soul of human kindness. I loved all the complex dualities captured in his character.

Equally interesting is the underlying story of London in the '70's - punk music & the rise of the National Front. It's interesting to think about how frightening the skinhead movement must have been to those who had survived the first go-round with Fascism.

This book is well written & literary without being overly conscious of its craft. The story is well-told, the characters fully realized and multidimensional. & the clothes - the joys to be had in costuming & re-costuming & all of the ways that clothes express who we are or who we wish we could be.