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A review by litdoes
The Clothes On Their Backs by Linda Grant
2.0
Built on a promising premise of showing us how clothes define our selves, this novel was also ambitious in its attempt to capture the history of a slum landlord in London through the eyes of his estranged niece.
Interspersed with thread narratives about slavery, the plight of East European refugees, discrimination and family ties, it also tries to deal with a displaced youth's sense of belonging and relations with her timid parents who are afraid to live life (in her opinion).
But perhaps it is the breadth of issues that the novel tries to tackle that causes it to fall flat in the end. They could not keep up with the characters the author was trying to paint, and for the most part, the characters just remained as characters on a printed page for me. The lackadaisical narrator failed to engage me in her problems. I remain unconvinced nor particularly moved by the narrator's changed impressions of her Uncle Sandor (termed the 'new face of evil' by the press), her plight as a young widow, nor her callous dismissal of her parents, especially in her conversations with her mom. She sounded like a cruel, overgrown and bratty 25-year-old teen in those exchanges.
A disappointment, considering the accolades this book garnered, and being on a Man Booker Shortlist, no less.
Interspersed with thread narratives about slavery, the plight of East European refugees, discrimination and family ties, it also tries to deal with a displaced youth's sense of belonging and relations with her timid parents who are afraid to live life (in her opinion).
But perhaps it is the breadth of issues that the novel tries to tackle that causes it to fall flat in the end. They could not keep up with the characters the author was trying to paint, and for the most part, the characters just remained as characters on a printed page for me. The lackadaisical narrator failed to engage me in her problems. I remain unconvinced nor particularly moved by the narrator's changed impressions of her Uncle Sandor (termed the 'new face of evil' by the press), her plight as a young widow, nor her callous dismissal of her parents, especially in her conversations with her mom. She sounded like a cruel, overgrown and bratty 25-year-old teen in those exchanges.
A disappointment, considering the accolades this book garnered, and being on a Man Booker Shortlist, no less.