THE DRESSMAKER (Kate Alcott)

 Fed up with domestic service and longing to develop her talents as an expert seamstress and designer, Tess  Collins sets off from Cherbourg, France on the Titanic as the hastily hired assistant to the famous couturier Lady Lucile Duff Gordon. The dramatic, volatile Madame Lucile and her husband, Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon, are on their way to New York to present her new fashion line and are serendipitously (for Tess) in need of a maid/assistant just as Tess arrives looking for work.  When the supposedly indestructible ship sinks, Tess escapes into one of the last lifeboats while the Duff Gordons, along with 3 other people and 7 crew members (including Tess's friend Jim Bonney), depart in Lifeboat One, a boat designed to hold 50 people.  After the survivors (about 1/3 of the total on board) are rescued and transported to New York on the Carpathia, U.S. Senator Smith conducts a series of hearings to investigate the cause of the disaster and the actions taken in its aftermath, including reports that the passengers in Lifeboat One, at the insistence of Lady Duff Gordon,  refused to pull additional victims from the icy waters of the Atlantic.


The Dressmaker is perfectly timed to take advantage of the popularity of "Downton Abbey" and the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster.  Rather than focusing on the disaster itself, Alcott writes about its emotional toll on the survivors and the impact of class and wealth in determining who escaped from the ship.  The year 1912 was a time of change in the United States, with the suffragist movement in full swing and class barriers being broken down, and fashion reflected changing attitudes in and toward women.  Tess is caught up in this  new, exciting world, caught between servitude and ambition and torn between two very different men.

As a historical novelist, Alcott presents the reader with an unusual view of the Titanic incident.  I have said in the past that I enjoy real historical figures being used as characters in fiction.  Here, the Duff Gordons were real as was the incident with Lifeboat One, but I feel that Alcott has taken a little bit too much liberty with the Duff Gordons' involvement, mixing fact and fiction a little too freely.  There are some interesting accounts of their experiences available in Encylopedia Titanica at http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/titanic-survivor/lady-duff-gordon.html,.

Another issue that I had with the novel is that it seemed to fall a bit short on focus.  I would have liked more detail on the hearings, or more of an emotional connection (aside from Lucile's hysterics) to the loss of the Titanic.  Almost no one seems to have suffered from PTSD or had lingering after-effects from their near-death. I think that perhaps the reader needs to keep in mind, though, that the title is The Dressmaker and that Tess' reactions and experiences are probably in keeping with her station in life, her upbringing, and the time in which the  novel is set.  In this modern age we are so used to political correctness, media frenzy, over-reaction, and litigation that acceptance and deference as reactions to a tragedy may seem almost foreign to us.  This is a book written from the point of view of a young woman moving from a restricted, class-oriented world to one of new freedoms and opportunities.  Overall, I enjoyed the novel very much and would recommend it.