Elegance by Kathleen Tessaro: A Review

 

Dhivya's Note: This is a special review from a reader of the  blog.

Deepika Ananthakrishnan, a friend, Book fanatic, excellent book critic.

Dedicated to the stories we shared and the books we swapped in those two short years. Thank you.

 

BOOK TITLE: Elegance

ISBN: 978-0-06-052225-4

AUTHOR: Kathleen Tessaro

GENRE: Fiction

NUMBER OF PAGES: 320

FORMAT: Digital

SERIES / STANDALONE: Standalone

REVIEW BY: Deepika Ananthakrishnan, Friend, Avid book reader, excellent book critic.

REVIEW:

An old movie quote which goes something like ‘you can teach fashion to somebody but never teach them style’ came to my mind as soon as I saw this book in the library. The cover picture was also oh so cute that I couldn’t resist it! So I picked it up.

This is actually the cleanest chick-lit that I have read in the last couple of years and will probably hit you hard in the head a couple of times by making you reflect on your own wardrobe. Other than that it is a depressing, miserably dragging story about the lead character who is a thirty something woman who lives in a monotonous marriage and is a weepy doormat from page one.

Louise Canova, the protagonist picks up a book called ‘Elegance’ by a certain Madame Dariaux in the 1940’s, in a second hand bookstore and finds it so fascinating that she goes on to adopt it as her fairy godmother in print and even starts sticking up yellow post-its of lines from the book everywhere in her hard to afford home. It begins with her wondering (which is irritatingly childish most of the times) why her life is not as glamorous as her mother-in-law’s is. The married couple however seem to be more interested in decorating their house than in their marriage. So I don’t understand what more clues she must have needed to realise that something is terribly wrong with her marriage (and her eating habits). No points to you in guessing how her marriage becomes a disaster soon or in guessing that the book slowly changes her to think deeply (believe me, she does a lot of it!) and value people beyond their looks. If you have read enough fiction you must also have guessed by this point that there is the ‘did they really exist?’ romantic, honest and extremely intelligent guy waiting for her at the end of the book.

The only remotely likable thing in the story is Louise’s childhood which would have made a much more engrossing read and the few hints of dark humour about the classic dresses Madame advices her to wear(most of which is impractical today!). It only pushed me to google a few outfits mentioned and sadly made me realise that my bright red sweater doesn’t go well at all with my light brown pants.

 This book has all the sugar, spice and everything nice to be made into a Katherine Heigl movie after a few more years, but otherwise it’s just one sad story of a woman with a dead-end job living in England.

 

WHAT I LIKED: Hints of dark humour (read Louise’s friend) and a few good tips thrown in here and there to help me dress less like a lollypop and more like a grown woman.

WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER: The presence of an original storyline with at least a semblance of a plot thrown in might have saved the book.

VERDICT: Do not judge a book by its cover. (Will I ever learn this?)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Kathleen attended the University of Pittsburgh before entering the drama program of Carnegie Mellon University. In the middle of her sophomore year, she went to study in London for three months and stayed for the next twenty-three years. She began writing at the suggestion of a friend and was an early member of the Wimpole Street Writer’s Workshop. Her debut novel, Elegance, became a bestseller in hardback and paperback. All of Kathleen's novels including Innocence, The Flirt, The Debutante, and most recently, The Perfume Collector have been translated into many languages and sold all over the world. She returned to Pittsburgh in 2009, where she now lives with her husband and son.

EDITIONS AVAILABLE: Kindle, Paperback, Hardcover

PRICE: 534 for paperback

BOOK LINKS: http://www.amazon.in/Elegance-Kathleen-Tessaro-ebook/dp/B002RIA07G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383758596&sr=8-1&keywords=elegance+kathleen+tessaro