⋙ Read Gratis The Women in Black Madeleine StJohn 9780349105222 Books

The Women in Black Madeleine StJohn 9780349105222 Books

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The Women in Black Madeleine StJohn 9780349105222 Books

The Women in Black is set in a the Women's Frock section of a 1950s Sydney department store where the sales assistants must all wear black dresses. Patty, Fay and Miss Jacobs (whose Christian name we never learn) all work in 'Ladies' Cocktail' while Slovenian emigre Magda rules the exclusive 'Model Gowns' section. Arriving into this refined environment as a summer casual is bright-eyed Lisa (Lesley to her parents) who has just left school and is waiting for the results of her leaving exams.

It's amazing that this debut novel was written as recently as 1993 when St John was in her 50s. She would have been a teenager in the 1950s and almost certainly shopped in similar stores herself. Despite being a private, reclusive woman and having lived in London for 25y before writing this she has caught the feel and essence of the place and time very well. Women were expected to leave school (although Lisa dreams her exam results will be good enough to win her a scholarship to University), work for a few years until they can marry and then stay home to look after the house, cook meals on time for her husband and raise children. Any woman failing to do so was pitied by her friends as Patty is for being childless and 28 year old Fay for being unmarried.

Magda, as a post war refugee, along with her husband Stefan, is considered quite exotic and Lisa is thrilled to be taken under her wing both at work and outside. Through Magda a whole new world of possibilities opens up for conservatively brought up Lisa.

This book is quite a delight, full of humour and sharp insight. This kindle version also has an informative foreward by director Bruce Beresford, her contemporary at Sydney University, and an obituary by her publisher Christopher Potter.


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The Women in Black Madeleine StJohn 9780349105222 Books Reviews

The book through its power of description yet simple, sometimes tongue in cheek, text captures the innocence and awakening of people living in that era in Sydney. I suppose because I grew up in those times in Sydney and am so familiar with the places described by the author it had a particular feeling of familiarity for me.
Cute little book, kind of left me hanging at the end. But, over all a good read.
In the years after the war there a changes in the social life of Australia, and the role of women in society. This book sees those changes played out in the exquisitely realised lives of the sales women in a Sydney department store - each searching for a bit of happiness in their lives. It's a book that you feel happier for having read.
What a pleasure to read this honest book set in post-WWII Sydney. The characters were beautifully drawn, the settings authentic, and the plot delightful.It was beautifully confirmed when viewing the recently released film, which successfully brought the story to the screen, without deviating from the book. All round a delight and a joy.
I was looking forward to reading this - it had been described to me as something of a trip down Memory Lane for those of us who remember shopping in the 60s. It wasn't.
St John's style irritated me. She seems to prefer foreign terms , presumably attempting to give her a feeling of worldliness.
Using words like pace, ukase, paterfamilias, cicerone, echt, viands among others makes the author sound a bit desperate to appear well-read. In a story about the lives of average Sydneysiders it distanced the author.
All the characters (particularly the European immigrants) are caricatures. Magda, the Croatian, uses french exclusively when her English fails. All are painted as lovers of opera, art and fine foods.
On the positive side it was a quick, easy read!
I just finished this book and it was a delight. I really was sad when it concluded. I remember David Jones, which I am sure it was modelled after, as just like this when visiting with my Grandmother in the late 50's and early 60's, I loved the grandeur of the lifts and the elegantly dressed staff, and who could forget the smells from the perfume counter. I had my first Bra fitting there, sad to say it is not the same as then. The Characters where wonderful. Particularly Magda, how wonderful to have been at one of her parties, I could almost here the voices if I closed my eyes. I could feel the gowns and every now and then glimpsed the black figures out of the corners of my eye. The Characters were very well drawn and it truly depicted the time of the many new ideas and emigrants into Sydney, and the fabulous drama and changes they brought.
If you would like to visit it as well, read the book and go back in time.
I'd give this five stars for the quality of Madelene St John's writing. It only looses one star due to the sexism of the 1950s and I don't accept that as a product of her time the author had to have those sexist attitudes. Authors have led the way in the past and been forward thinking and not always had the same narrow mindedness as the society in which they existed. I'd have loved to see at least one of the female characters unwilling to conform to the social pressures on women in the 1950's to be good little girls, go to school, fill in time in a service job with little advancement potential until you marry.

Kyle Tennant, writing in an earlier decade wrote novels that showed women with stronger and less stereotypical character. It was a good read, an easy read. I can't say I enjoyed it as I lived and hated this very sexist aspect of the 1950s where women were domestic and shown as service roles and unexciting ones at that.

Interesting as a history lesson, just don't think all women were as meek as those shown in this book, I certainly didn't conform to this 'more interested in acquiring a dress than acquiring a life' attitude to life. This could have been a brilliant classic book if just one of those women has shown more 'oomph.
The Women in Black is set in a the Women's Frock section of a 1950s Sydney department store where the sales assistants must all wear black dresses. Patty, Fay and Miss Jacobs (whose Christian name we never learn) all work in 'Ladies' Cocktail' while Slovenian emigre Magda rules the exclusive 'Model Gowns' section. Arriving into this refined environment as a summer casual is bright-eyed Lisa (Lesley to her parents) who has just left school and is waiting for the results of her leaving exams.

It's amazing that this debut novel was written as recently as 1993 when St John was in her 50s. She would have been a teenager in the 1950s and almost certainly shopped in similar stores herself. Despite being a private, reclusive woman and having lived in London for 25y before writing this she has caught the feel and essence of the place and time very well. Women were expected to leave school (although Lisa dreams her exam results will be good enough to win her a scholarship to University), work for a few years until they can marry and then stay home to look after the house, cook meals on time for her husband and raise children. Any woman failing to do so was pitied by her friends as Patty is for being childless and 28 year old Fay for being unmarried.

Magda, as a post war refugee, along with her husband Stefan, is considered quite exotic and Lisa is thrilled to be taken under her wing both at work and outside. Through Magda a whole new world of possibilities opens up for conservatively brought up Lisa.

This book is quite a delight, full of humour and sharp insight. This kindle version also has an informative foreward by director Bruce Beresford, her contemporary at Sydney University, and an obituary by her publisher Christopher Potter.