Fifteen year old Rose Lovell has just moved to Leonora, a small town in Queensland, Australia, with her wandering father. They’ve been on the move since her mother died when Rose was six. Her father, who’s had a drinking problem for many years, finds sporadic jobs, but he mostly leaves them after a few months, packing everything up and moving on to the next place. Leonora is just the next town in the neverending string of stops, and Rose doesn’t intend to put down any roots or make any friends.
Pearl Kelly, though, knows nothing about Rose’s determination to avoid all human entanglements, and she insinuates herself into Rose’s life, practically forcing her into a friendship. Pearl is beautiful and sweet and kind and naive, and Rose can’t help but love her. Their friendship develops slowly, sweetly, and Rose begins to think that maybe there is a life for her here in Leonora.
Pearl convinces Rose to attend the Harvest Festival put on by their high school, which means she’ll need a dress. Not just any dress, either – one made by the local eccentric, old Edie Baker. Some speculate that Edie is a witch, living in her remote house full of strange, old things. But whatever else Edie is, she is firstly a dressmaker, and the price of a dress for Rose is simply Rose’s assistance in making it. As Rose helps make the dress – the midnight dress – Edie tells stories of her life, dating back to before World War II, which make the book a story-within-a-story.
It’s Rose’s relationship with these two girls/women – Pearl and Edie – that drives the story, though we get snippets of her relationship with her father, with a boy in her grade, and a few others. Hanging over the entire book is a tragedy, one foreshadowed from the very first page. Something terrible has happened in Leonora, we learn, and it has something to do with Rose, Pearl, Edie, and the dress.
The Midnight Dress is one of those books that a lot of people describe as magical – and some claim to have magical realism – but in reality, has no magic at all. It’s the quality of the writing that drives this description, I think. I don’t necessarily mean that it’s outstanding (though I believe it is). Rather, the way Foxlee tells her story makes it seem as if it’s all occurring in a completely fabricated place, where senses are heightened, emotions are felt more deeply, and wonderful (and terrible) things happen in a way they never could in our own everyday lives. There’s an insular feel to the story, as if the characters exist outside of the world inhabited by the readers, and we are only allowed a glimpse.
I don’t think Foxlee’s story is unusual in this regard, but she certainly does it very well. The techniques of alternating viewpoints and frequent switches in time contribute to this feel. It makes the story incredibly gripping, but in a very different way from a thriller or a romance. When the story was done, I felt as if I were emerging from a kind of fog. I had to go to work a few tracks before the end, and I could not get my mind off the story for the entire work day. This is quite unusual for me with audiobooks, which I usually listen to with about 90% of my attention.
An audiobook that can do this to me is obviously very well-narrated. Sometimes accents can get on my nerves, but Olivia Mackenzie-Smith is a native Australian and she sounds completely genuine. Her Pearl sounds naive, enthusiastic, and kind, while her Rose is just the perfect amount of bitter and, slowly, hopeful. She drops her voice for the male characters without making them sound like caricatures. It’s a very well-done production.
It doesn’t feel much like a YA book to me, though. It was initially published for the adult market in Australia and then bought for YA readers in the United States. There’s a certain distance to the characters, which prevents the reader (or listener) from really getting into their heads. I ached for them, but I didn’t ever feel like I was them. The narrative very much seemed like an adult telling the girls’ story – perhaps even Edie herself. It felt quite refreshing to read a book that seemed more adult, actually, which I don’t do much of lately. A lot of adult books follow this one’s structure as well – split timelines and a story within a story, with a mystery wrapped up in it all. I’d be curious to read what other people thought about the book’s “YA-ness.”
One final thought: the book is set in 1986, and an event that occurs in that year plays a minor – but ultimately very important – role. There are mentions of the Soviet Union and a lack of cell phones. The time period also makes it possible for Edie to have lived through World War I – and remember it – and still be alive and well enough to sew a dress in 1986. This would be impossible to do in 2013. I think the year is justified for the story, but it doesn’t really feel much like an historical book.