The clothes on their backs
A sensitive, bookish girl is shocked to meet her Uncle Sandy - a very dapper man - who is violently unwelcome in the home of her timid, refugee parents. Volunteering to write his life story, she learns about the concealed past and choices faced for survival; and Vivien comes to understand how the clothes we wear define us.
Available Copies by Location
Location | |
---|---|
Victoria | Available |
Browse Related Items
Subject |
Dysfunctional families > Fiction. Secrecy > Fiction. Refugees > England > Fiction. Nineteen seventies > Fiction. London (England) > Fiction. |
Genre |
Domestic fiction. Fiction. |
- ISBN: 1844085414
- ISBN: 9781844085415
- Physical Description 293 pages : illustrations
- Publisher [Place of publication not identified] : London : 2008.
Content descriptions
Immediate Source of Acquisition Note: | LSC 24.00 |
Additional Information
The Clothes on Their Backs
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Summary
The Clothes on Their Backs
In a red brick mansion block off the Marylebone Road, Vivien, a sensitive, bookish girl grows up sealed off from both past and present by her timid refugee parents. Then one morning a glamorous uncle appears, dressed in a mohair suit, with a diamond watch on his wrist and a girl in a leopard-skin hat on his arm. Why is Uncle Sándor so violently unwelcome in her parents' home? This is a novel about survival - both banal and heroic - and a young woman who discovers the complications, even betrayals, that inevitably accompany the fierce desire to live. Set against the backdrop of a London from the 1950s to the present day, The Clothes on Their Backs is a wise and tender novel about the clothes we choose to wear, the personalities we dress ourselves in, and about how they define us all.