Almanac and downtown the dump, presided over by the cheery and fecund McSwineys, including their handsome eldest son, Teddy.Īll of these characters conform to name and job as tightly as a pack of Happy Families cards and are as stout and badly dressed as any of the supporting cast of “Muriel’s Wedding” - and often as close to the camera. She seemed strong, but damaged.” Rapidly, Ham’s arch, polished prose fills in the rest of the map: Here is the oppressive schoolhouse of grim Miss Dimm here the dismal department store of the frightful Pratts there the chemist shop of sinister Mr. “Myrtle Dunnage had alabaster skin and her mother’s eyes and hair. The novel’s quirky, pale heroine, Mad Molly’s daughter, duly arrives on the next bus. From the moment the book opens, with a long shot of “wheat-yellow plains” around the “dark blot” of a hill in the small country town of Dungatar, we sense that we’re on our way to quirky-indie-movie land and once the camera closes in on the “tumbling brown house” of Mad Molly, “leaning provocatively on the grassy curve,” it’s clear we’re visiting a small 1950s town not of history but as imagined by Tim Burton: the gothic, polarized world of “Edward Scissorhands.”Īnd here we stay. What’s surprising is that a film version took so long to appear.
Rosalie Ham’s novel “The Dressmaker” was published in Australia in 2000 and later this year will be presented as a movie starring Kate Winslet.
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