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THE SEAMSTRESS OF HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD by Erin McGraw

THE SEAMSTRESS OF HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD

by Erin McGraw

Pub Date: Aug. 1st, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-618-38628-4

Or, Coco Chanel goes to Kansas, and gets the heck out.

Nell Plat, the center of McGraw’s (Creative Writing/Ohio State Univ.; The Good Life, 2004, etc.) novel, is what Dorothy Gale might have become had she not scooted off in a cyclone: She has all the skills of a rural woman just out of the pioneer era, she knows just a little something about birthing babies, popping out a couple at the tender age of 17, and she’s bright as all get out. But little Nell has seen the great lights a-flickerin’ on the horizon, which gives her ma and pa reason to think she fancies herself a little too good for the prairie; after all, Nell whinnies, “I’m not after staying on the smallest ranch in Kansas. I’d like to see something fresh for a change,” a pretty decent clue as to her intentions. Nell makes good: Shaking off her loser husband, who can’t tell ryegrass seed from wheat, she hies herself off to Hollywood and sets up shop as couturier to the budding film industry, her garments soon to brush the knobby knees of Jazz Age starlets everywhere and bestow still more Itness on the It Girl, Miss Clara Bow. But that Kansas past—well, it just won’t leave our heroine alone, ryegrass and all. Essentially an oater with flappers, McGraw’s novel moves at a pace befitting hand-cranked movie cameras; modern readers may find it a tad too glacial for comfort. Apart from endless exposition, the author invests great energy into getting the idioms of the day right, too; thus the narrative is peppered with phrases such as, “Should the wearer be seized by the urge to do the Charleston, this dress will accommodate her” and “What do the sheiks and shebas back in Topeka think is the bee’s knees?” That attention to period detail would gladden the heart of a reader in the Jazz Age, but it’s just a little too much for one in our dimension.

A workshoppy affair in which not much happens. Sewing buffs, however, may learn a thing or two.