The Wardrobe Department by Elaine Garvey: book review
Overview: Mairéad moved from Ireland to London to work in the wardrobe department of a theater. She rents a room in a shabby house with many other people, she doesn't quite fit with her coworkers and despises the producer of Uncle Vanya, and she spends much of her time feeling out of place. Even her clothes don't fit right. After chronicling a day at the theater in great detail, Mairéad learns her grandmother died, and she has to return to Ireland for the funeral. There, she has to confront awkward family situations and feeling out of place in a different way. Still, the time helps her unearth more information than she had before, and she returns to London with a new energy. Overall: 3.5
Characters: 3 For being a first person novel, Mairéad renders herself somewhat flat on the page. She feels uncomfortable and withdrawn from everyone, but beyond flinching away and being defensive and also chronicling all of the clothing she feels deeply uncomfortable in, we know almost nothing about her. Despite living her day at the theater very granularly, there's very little deeper information that we glean about her or anyone else in her orbit. She is as distant from the reader as she is everyone else. At home, there's this same disconnect among all the characters until Mairéad is nearly on her way home and her mother cracks open. When Mairéad comes home with a new attitude, things in London begin to shift, and she becomes more integrated in the theater community and wants to better herself, but this is only a quick glimpse before the book ends. It gives a high of Mairéad achieving community and a deeper sense of care for herself, but it's unclear if that's really what Mairéad wanted at the beginning of the book. For much of the novel, Mairéad feels like a ghost in her own life without much want or even personality. These people grow to be more endearing, and Garvey is clearly trying to write a book about deeply reserved people learning to stand up for themselves despite deeply engrained notions, but there just isn't enough working under the surface to compel the reader forward or create deep interest and attachment before the story is nearly over.
Plot: 3 The structure here is a large part of the books' achilles heel. We start by experiencing a day at the theater that takes up the first half of the novel, one which does not seem particularly remarkable in any way. The chapters only give what time it is in the day, so it takes a while to situate yourself in the fact that the story takes place in 2002. There are small clues and eventually there are full dates given at the start of chapters which clarifies, but there is a sense of floating at first. The interactions are so slow and mundane, and there isn't a deep amount of character work or introspection either, so I spent the entire first chunk of the novel confused as to why the book was happening or where it was going. Then there's the section in Ireland at the wake. Here, we learn a bit more about Mairéad's background, but we aren't given quite enough to apply weight to this particular moment as it's unfolding. Only in the end does the reader feel a deep sense of importance to the events. The final short jump back to London is the only part of the novel that really has a richness to convey a feeling to the reader. Really, where the book ends in London feels like where Mairéad's story actually begins.
The structure of this book feeds into the reality that while I say I love plot-less books, that isn't really true. I like plot that is intimately tied to character to the point where it might be invisible to the naked eye, but it has to be there. I don't mind when books languidly wander and take time to go really deep into the people that populate the world, digressing from what seems like the point. This book just feels a bit untethered, like Mairéad has a story but it hasn't quite been found. I think that largely comes from having a character that is withdrawn, even from the reader paired with a story that isn't teaming with action. And it is proof that a compelling bond with the people in the world, or at least a curiosity, is required to ground a novel and hold interest.
Writing: 3 I will say, for everything I've said above, there was something that compelled me to keep reading even as I had major doubts about what payoff there would be. The novel is all together too withholding, but there are interesting glimmers on the themes of suppression, using your voice when that's not something you've been trained to do, and forging into the city on your own. Despite what I've said, I related to a lot of the book. I know deeply what it's like to be an outsider, what it's like to be haunted by things unsaid, and the compulsion to bite your tongue despite your best interest. I love a book set in a theater, and by the end, I hoped Mairéad was genuinely on the way to somewhere better, to a part of her life where she was in a stable enough place to have more expressible wants and a more forthcoming story.
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