The Secret Lives of Dresses

November 8, 2010
Blogger McKean's retro fashion-forward coming-of-age debut follows Dora Winston as she sashays toward a degree in "vagueness studies" while engaged in a fruitless flirtation with her coffee shop boss. She's got no idea what to do with her life, and then her adored grandmother, Mimi, has a stroke, and Dora is whisked back to Mimi's vintage clothing store, where she learns more about Mimi, thanks to the secret (and ploddingly overwritten) stories Mimi has stashed away on pieces of paper stuck in the pockets of her most intriguing inventory. Flashbacks flesh out Mimi's wisdom and wit, while store workers Gabby and Maux complete the trilogy of strong and funny women who run the business and help Dora find her way. The prose hovers somewhere below lackluster, however, and Dora's journey is as comfortable and unsurprising as a favorite sweater.

December 1, 2010

A Dress a Day blogger McKean's pleasantly effervescent debut is chick lit about vintage frocks.

The heroine of this breezy romance is Dora Winston, who is a bit of a blank—no style, no boyfriend, no real sense of her future—until her grandmother Mimi, who brought Dora up while running a fabulous vintage clothes store in Forsyth, N.C., is felled by a stroke. Rushing back from college to Mimi's bedside, Dora finds her life switching tracks. Out go her ratty cargo pants as she starts wearing the vintage dresses Mimi picked out for her. Working at Mimi's shop, she discovers both that she likes it, and also that some of the dresses have secret lives, in the form of short narratives written about them. Dora also wonders about her parents, killed when she was small, whom Mimi never discussed. And all the time she's being quietly pursued by kind, unthreatening-yet-hunky architect Con Murphy. When Mimi dies, Dora inherits her house but not the shop, which goes to her cartoonishly grotesque relatives. She decides to fight for the business. A letter found in Mimi's pre-purchased funeral urn helps answer all outstanding issues.

No surprises here, nor quite enough development, but for those seeking light entertainment this story will fit the bill.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

January 1, 2011

Now in her last year of college, Dora is wandering aimlessly through life, majoring in liberal arts--a subject that allows her to delay contemplating her future--and taking whatever opportunities come along. When her grandmother Mimi suffers a stroke, Dora rushes home to Forsyth, NC, where she runs the vintage dress shop in Mimi's absence and slowly transforms into the woman she never thought she was, one who feels at home in vintage dresses. In distracting herself from the pain brought on by her grandmother's illness, Dora soon finds herself doing exactly what she has always avoided: making decisions about her future. Lexicographer McKean interweaves an involving tale about vintage dresses that have "secret lives" with her underlying theme of finding oneself during times of turmoil and loss. VERDICT In this quiet debut novel, fans of McKean's blog (www.dressaday.com) will be especially captivated by her ability to effectively spice up a consistently steady plot with a heaping of the "secret lives" they have enjoyed for years. It will also appeal to readers who enjoy coming-of-age tales.--Natasha Grant, New York

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.