Novel set in Europe, Manila and Turkey
Novel set in LONDON’s theatreland (and Donegal)
18th November 2024
The Wardrobe Department by Elaine Garvey, novel set mainly in London’s theatre land.
Mairéad hails from Ireland and now finds herself in the early 2000s in London, working in the St Leonard’s theatre in the heart of the West End. She is employed as a dresser in the wardrobe department, dealing with the garment detritus that requires mending and cleaning after every performance. Currently the characters from Uncle Vanya are exercising her patience, whilst she also has to fend off the more annoying members of the theatre crew.
Cleaning and repairing clothes that are steeped in dirt and the fetid stains of bodily fluids and odours is a far cry from the glamorous job it might seem. But somehow she gets through her days.
She has the potential and position to make something of herself now, yet she is stuck in her groove of low self esteem and struggles to find an equilibrium amongst her new colleagues. It feels like the story of the country mouse and the town mouse and she struggles to get to grips with the opportunity of being in London. The echoes of her life in Ireland still haunt her, her mother is clearly still short on bonhomie and positive words, yet she is drawn to go back to her home in Donegal. There she is swamped again, this time by death, and yet she feels she doesn’t really fit in there either, now that she has her star-studded life in the English capital….
London in particular comes to life in this well written story, as Mairéad makes her way around the city. There are plenty of landmarks that firmly set the narrative in time and place. It is also really interesting to discover the backroom work that goes on day-in and day-out to keep a show on the road, as it were.
For me, however, there was a grey wash over the story that somehow dulled my reading experience. Mairéad wasn’t a stand-out character for whom I rooted, she felt like such a toned down soul and so it probably won’t be a novel that will linger for very long.
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