Luzia, scarred by a childhood accident that has left her with a deformed arm, knows that for her, real life can not be romantically embroidered, and so she finds solace in her sewing and in the secret prayers to the saints she believes once saved her life. Captivated by the romances she reads in magazines, she dreams of finding love in the bustle and glamour of the city. Raised as seamstresses, the sisters learn how to cut, how to mend and how to conceal.Įmilia treasures pretty, girlish things and longs to escape from the confines of the little town. twitter.Emilia and Luzia dos Santos, orphaned when they are children, grow up under the protection of their aunt in the hillside village of Taquaritinga, Brazil.Published: August 2008 Furthermore: The Seamstress is the first novel by de Pontes Peebles, who was born in Brazil and grew up in Miami. Worst line in what I read: Would a Brazilian woman living in 1928 have used the phrase “state-of-the-art” (as in “a state-of-the-art machine: a pedal-operated Singer”)? Interesting as some of the material was, the book didn’t have enough depth to hold my attention for more than 600 pages.īest line in what I read: “Beneath her bed, Aunt Sofia kept a wooden box that held her husband’s bones.” She tells us that people called young Luzia “the yolk” and Emília “the white,” and the sisters have that yolk-and-white quality in the novel. But for all her painstaking attention to detail, de Pontes Peebles draws her characters broadly.
In The Seamstress the tape measure is a metaphor for truth or trustworthiness, the ability to give a straight account.
She also weaves into her plot an appealing sewing motif, showing how rewarding and arduous dressmaking could be when Singer’s hand-cranked machines were giving way to electric ones. Like Dunne, Frances de Pontes Peebles has a strong sense of pace, uses her research well and maps the intersection of sex, crime and social status. What I stopped reading: This novel resembles a cross between a Brazilian Bonnie and Clyde and a Dominick Dunne novel. How much I read: The first 50 and the last 75 pages, about a quarter of the book. Luzia lives among bandits after being abducted at an early age by cangaceiros, roving groups of men and women who for centuries plundered and protected the countryside of northeastern Brazil. Emília marries into high society in Recife and opens a dress shop that thrives on the patronage of the prominent friends of her in-laws. What it is: A historical saga about two orphaned sisters, trained as seamstresses, whose lives diverge and converge in dangerous ways during their early adulthood Brazil in the 1930s. The latest in an occasional series of posts on books I didn’t finish and why I didn’t finish them
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