The Dressmaker

Reviews

"Folds compelling story into Titanic tragedy....Seamlessly stitching fact and fiction together, Alcott creates a hypnotic tale"
--USA Today

"An unashamed girlie-book....we learn a good deal about what it was like when the ship went down. But we also follow Tess as she learns about the high-fashion business in New York."
--Washington Post

"Why write a Titanic story not really about the Titanic? Because what happens to the survivors makes for interesting reading.....compelling.....Her research into the Titanic, its sinking, and the hearings subsequently prompted is impeccable....fascinating.....actual historical figures become intricate characters in Alcott's hands."
--Seattle Post Intelligencer

"If you want a fictional escape [about the Titanic], then it's time to turn to a new novel called The Dressmaker....the book explores complicated gender dynamics of the time, and offers a heroine you can really root for"
--NPR's All Things Considered

"Kate Alcott seamlessly stitches fact and fiction together creating this wonderfully colorful book. This story has many layers and reaches far beyond the tragedy of the Titanic....riveting....This novel is steeped in truth woven together with fiction making this Titanic tale feel like one never told before....beautifully told and really examines loss, love, survival and the choices made in between."
--The Examiner 

"While reading The Dressmaker, I felt as if I were actually living and breathing the events before, during and after the tragedy....The novel is filled with the atmosphere, clothes, and historical figures of the times, including the Astors, "The Unsinkable" Molly Brown, and J. Bruce Ismay, the White Star's Managing Director, who cowardly boarded a lifeboat before others."
--Huffington Post

"It's Titanic revisited, in a romance focused on the survivors and the scandal, seen from the perspective of an aspiring seamstress whose fortunes intertwine with real characters from the epic tragedy....interesting historical facts...an appealing, soulful freshness to this shrewdly commercial offering"
--Kirkus

"Brims with engrossing storytelling....For fans of Sarah Jio, Susanna Kearsley, and immigrant tales."
--Booklist

"The Dressmaker will appeal to readers of other historical book group favorites, The Paris Wife and Loving Frank."
--Book Group Buzz, A Booklist Blog

"Thoroughly enjoyable."
--The Book Reporter

"The 1912 sinking of the Titanic is the stone at the center of a ripple expanding to encompass the rest of the world in this fictionalized account of real historical persons and events. It is a layered story highlighting class differences and the public and private personas people put on as easily as high-fashion dresses, illustrating both the tragedy’s individual torment as well as a larger wave of survivor’s guilt. Multiple points of view bring many perspectives to the witch-hunt atmosphere and courtroom drama of a shocked world looking for someone to blame. By setting the story mainly in New York City, Alcott contrasts Lady Duff Gordon’s lush, glittering world of high society with reporter Pinky Wade’s tenement squalor and seamstress Tess Collins’s ambition and longing for freedom. Tess, the fulcrum of a star-crossed love triangle with two fellow survivors, a twice-divorced wealthy American and a sailor with a talent for woodcarving, never loses her integrity as she struggles to make sense of everything. These small stories stand for hundreds of others whose voices were stolen by the tragedy as survivors faced the consequences of indiscretion and quick tongues. A low hum of background action–suffragettes and union tensions–mirrors the human costs in the disaster that besets the Titanic....will find much to think about in this story shaped by the inherent desire to know more about one of the most documented and researched tragedies in human history"
--Library Journal

“We all know how the Titanic went down, we all saw the movie. But what happened after? This brilliant book shows the aftermath of the tragedy, seen through the eyes of a brave, young girl who was on board, on her way to America, to start a new life as a dressmaker. From the minute Tess sets foot on the doomed ship, this is the kind of novel you simply cannot put down and cannot forget.”
--Tatiana de Rosnay, author of Sarah's Key and A Secret Kept

“Kate Alcott’s The Dressmaker is a beautifully told story that examines loss, love, couture and the choices we make when everything is on the line--all sewn together into one compelling read. I can’t stop thinking about this book and its characters.”
--Sarah Jio, author of The Violets of March and The Bungalow 
 
   
"We're all riveted by a tragedy, but what happens to the survivors?  THE DRESSMAKER is that rare novel that asks not only what comes next but what we would do in a morally unspeakable situation--and how we live with those choices.  A brave, truly gripping novel."  
--Jenna Blum, author of Those Who Save Us and The Stormchasers
 
“The Dressmaker achieves the remarkable -- it makes the sinking of the Titanic feel like a story never told before.  By focusing on the search for justice in the aftermath of the tragedy, this compelling first novel examines humanity at its best and worst, as seen through the eyes of one of the ship's survivors, a courageous young woman who is determined to make her own way in America.”
-- Lauren Belfer, author of A Fierce Radiance and City of Light
 
“This is a fascinating premise for a novel as well as a powerful, page-turning read.  It's also a very valuable contribution to our understanding of the events surrounding the sinking of the Titanic, and its aftermath.”
--Isabel Wolff, author of A Vintage Affair