The dressmaker's secret by Rosalie Ham

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Picador, 2020. ISBN: 9781760982027.
(Age: Adult) Tilly, the dressmaker is back! She is in hiding in Melbourne slaving away for the demanding Mrs Flock at the Salon Mystique, her talents in dress design gaining favour as everyone prepares for the grand social occasion of the 1953 coronation of the new queen. But there are people searching for her - a mysterious man in elegant clothes, a villainous welfare officer, and a whole cast of angry, stupid, venomous people from that horrible country town Dungatar.
The kindhearted cross-dressing Sergeant Farrat is there to help her as always; he and other closet fashion lovers are a source of humour, along with the whole crazy world of the Hippocampus Club. It is an era when single mothers and homosexuals are reviled, and female workers are exploited, but Ham deals with these issues in a light-hearted melodramatic way. The characters are Dickensian stereotypes and the action is farcical, it's all just a lot of fun. More serious attention goes to the clothes!
Having seen the 2015 film The dressmaker starring Kate Winslett, I knew to expect a comedy about revenge, but even so I found it hard to pull the pieces together in this sequel without having read the first book. There are frequent references to unexplained secrets that really demand reading the books in order. But I am sure that readers of The dressmaker will enjoy finding out what happens to Tilly next.
Themes: Humour, Fashion, Cross-dressing, Revenge.
Helen Eddy

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