The Midnight Dress

Starred review from September 9, 2013
It’s the mid-1980s when lonely 15-year-old Rose Lovell and her recovering alcoholic father wash up in a tiny Australian beach town. Against her better judgment, she allows herself to be befriended by exuberant, beautiful Pearl Kelly, who sweeps Rose up into various whims and projects. The procurement of a dress for the upcoming Harvest Parade brings Rose to Edie Baker, locally considered to be a witch. As Edie teaches a reluctant Rose to sew a gorgeous midnight blue dress to wear in the parade, she recounts tales from her past that become the backdrop for both the deepening of Rose and Pearl’s friendship and its eventual dissolution. Not unlike an expert seamstress herself, Foxlee (The Anatomy of Wings) skillfully weaves multiple stories throughout this novel, including eerie, reader-directed chapter openers that portend future tragedy for the girls. The casual beauty of the language (“She leans forward. There’s a sudden applause of rain on the roof”) and the complex storytelling style create a haunting, atmospheric novel about friendship, betrayal, and loss. Ages 14–up. Agent: Catherine Drayton, Inkwell Management.

January 6, 2014
This haunting story alternates between the present—in which local police in a smalltown Australia try to solve the murder of a girl whose body was found in a midnight-blue dress—and the past, which details the circumstances leading up to the crime. In those earlier events, 15-year-old Rose comes to town with her shiftless drifter father and becomes fast friends with a girl named Pearl. Seeing that Rose cannot afford a new dress for a town event, Pearl suggests she visit eccentric Edie for help sewing one—thus the midnight-blue dress is born, setting into motion a tragic chain of events. Narrator Mackenzie-Smith is Australian and thus ably provides authentic accents for the characters. She lends Edie a distinct voice, but doesn’t clearly differentiate Rose, Pearl, and their schoolmates—and this can be confusing to listeners. Mackenzie-Smith’s narration is clean and clear, if somewhat uniform, and the murder mystery and significance of the dress will keep listeners engaged until the very end. Ages 14-up. A Knopf hardcover.