The Secret Lives of Dresses

The Secret Lives of Dresses by Erin McKean is not a bad book. It is also not a great book.  It's a lot better than many things that have been published and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, but if you are looking for something that will challenge you or even make you think just a little, look elsewhere.

Secret Lives is charming and comforting and the twists and turns of the plot should take absolutely no one by surprise. Dora returns home from college when her grandmother, Mimi, suffers a stroke.  She begins running Mimi's vintage clothing shop and reliving memories of growing up amid Mimi's classic dresses and hands-off parenting. The big revelations that come in the last few pages of the book are as easy to spot as a pair of Mary Janes in a sea of Ugg boots.

Gee, I wonder what Dora's father (who was killed with Dora's mother in a car accident years ago) wanted to do instead of run the family department store? Whatever could it have been? And could it possibly have anything to do with Mimi trying her hand at writing fiction??? And why is family friend, Gabby, so giggly and scatterbrained lately?  Oh well, I guess it's just a huge mystery that has nothing to do with her first husband moving back to town.

But these are minor annoyances. They are the kind of things we treasure in books designed to be light and fluffy. The only real bone I have to pick with McKean is her characterization of Camille and Tyffanee, two of Dora's relatives. The author doesn't miss a single opportunity to bash us over the head with how obnoxious and shallow these two are. I mean, they wear rhinestones, for goodness' sake. Obviously, this means they are mean and small-minded and possibly the Anti-Christ. We get it after about the second page, but McKean's hateful descriptions of people who would rather wear layered pink tank tops and miniskirts ends up making you want to defend these women even though Camille is a horror and her daughter is a Grade A certified sorority b****.

The only character McKean paints as even remotely complex enough for us to have trouble figuring out is Gary, Dora's flirty boss at the college coffee shop. Is he as into her as he appears at times or is Dora naively reading too much into a man who seems content to date a different girl every week and foist management of the coffee shop onto Dora? You'll have to wade through a sea of crinoline, tulle, and gingham to find out.  I'm pretty sure you'll enjoy the swim.

I have complained about this book a lot, but it has some very good points. My favorite character is Maux, the Rockabilly salesgirl at Mimi's shop who deserves a book of her own. I want to read more about her Lucille Ball hair and future in air conditioner repair.

PS: If you are craving some truly excellent "secret lives", check out The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd.

The Secret Life of Bees: The Movie vs. The Book

I do not expect a movie to be as good as the book on which it's based. Some movies fall far short. Others are reasonably good representations of the themes and characters found in the source material.

Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees is a very well-written book. Aside from a few minor plot problems, it is solid and well put together. The characters are fully formed, even if the reader has to get almost to the end before finding that out.

The movie is...ok. It's fairly well cast, especially when it comes to Sophie Okonedo, the actress who plays the unstable and tender-hearted May Boatwright. Alicia Keys is also nearly perfect as the aloof June Boatwright.

But I found myself wanting Queen Latifah to be a little less Queen Latifah, Paul Bettany to be a little less look-I'm-a-British-man-playing-a-southern-hick, Jennifer Hudson to be more of a force of nature the way Rosaleen seems in the book, and Dakota Fanning to be a more tortured Lily.

The main problem I have with the movie is not in the casting, though. It's in the glossing over of some of the book's major themes.
-The Virgin Mary is like another character in the book, one that the others interact with and know personally. In the movie, she basically just a statue in the living room to be dusted and occasionally prayed to.
-Lily does not wonder for a second if she actually caused her mother's death, something that simmers quietly under her other traumas in Kidd's work.
-And most disappointing of all, the film doesn't even begin to explore Lily's awakening to new ideas about race.

Lily is a girl who has been raised with the racial tension prevalent in mid-century South Carolina. She loves her black nanny, Rosaleen and bravely tries to defend her when things get ugly with some local white supremacists, but she still doesn't see how similar she and her black neighbors really are. It takes living with the Boatwright sisters and meeting their friends to make Lily see race is not always the thing that makes people different. It is a revelation to her to find that the Boatwright sisters are cultured and highly intelligent. It is even more of a revelation to find that Zach, the boy who helps with August Boatwright's honey business, is very attractive to her.

Lily's discoveries about race and her own feelings regarding it are often sudden and clearly expressed in her own mind. Others take longer to set in and only appear gradually. It's sad that this wasn't brought out in the film. To watch it is to have an idea of some of the broad strokes of the novel, but not the beauty and depth that make is such a good book.

The Secret Life of Bees

I've started reading The Secret Life of Bees. It started out rather To Kill a Mockingbird and now seems to be heading towards Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.