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The Clothes in the Wardrobe
In this novel written by the author of "The 27th Kingdom", "Unexplained Laughter", "Home Life" and "Secrets of Strangers", Lili comes to stay with Margaret's mother during the preparations for Margaret's marriage to Syl, and older and - as far as Margaret is concerned - undesirable man.
140 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
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About the author
Alice Thomas Ellis
46 books84 followersAlice Thomas Ellis was short-listed for the Booker prize for The 27th Kingdom. She is the author of A Welsh Childhood (autobiography), Fairy Tale and several other novels including The Summerhouse Trilogy, made into a movie starring Jeanne Moreau and Joan Plowright.
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Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews
October 29, 2025
This is the first of Ellis's books that has bored me. It has her usual dry wit which I love and her usual tortured musings over Catholic guilt and morals. The lead character, Margaret, becomes quickly irritating though and the outcome of the story irrelevant to me. If this was the first of her books I'd read, I wouldn't read any more. I'm just going to put it aside as one that I haven't enjoyed and I won't bother with the rest of the trilogy.
October 2025: I’ve just watched the dramatised version on BBC 4 with Julie Walters, Jeanne Moreau and the much missed Joan Plowright. Because it’s adapted, we don’t have all the navel gazing. It’s wonderful!
October 2025: I’ve just watched the dramatised version on BBC 4 with Julie Walters, Jeanne Moreau and the much missed Joan Plowright. Because it’s adapted, we don’t have all the navel gazing. It’s wonderful!
August 5, 2014
"Your average whore goes round like a taxi touting for trade but the innocent irresistible woman is like a municipal bus. It isn't her fault that people keep running after her, and its unpleasant for her, people jumping on and off..."
This sort of throwaway clever remark is what made this book, though enjoyable, not the best Alice Thomas Ellis I have ever read. The whole novel, like this sentence, was a little too contrived. The characters in it, as I often find in her books, are slightly less surreal than La Spark's and slightly less upmarket than those of Mary Wesley. but the three women write similarly of relationship and division and disgruntled hopes. Nevertheless, whereas in Spark I find intrigue and mystery and in Wesley there is a heavily tongue in cheek fun poking, Ellis sometimes seems to stand on her honour somehow; a writer of wit and arch humour and whilst this often works and makes me smile it can sometimes drag and annoy.
The story is a simple one. Margaret is preparing for her marriage to an oily ageing creep who is her mother's age and indeed in her mother's circle. (This, incidentally, is another common upper middle class concept in this type of story, of being in 'a circle' which jars on me somehow. It serves to alienate me from the characters though maybe that is its point. )Margaret seems powerless to do anything about it. She is a demoralized rabbit caught in the very gaudy and aggressive twin headlights of maternal snobby oppression on the one hand and adolescent ennui and hopelessness on the other. Enter Lili, the larger than life femme fatale quoted at the head of the review......she enters, she perceives and then, cleverly and decisively, she manouveres.
There is mystery at the heart of the story, what is the secret Margaret is hiding which causes not her ennui but her hopelessness, her feeling only worthy of a dead life ? It is not a William Styron, Sophie style choice when we discover it but it is bleak and shocking and causes things to make a little sense.
Lili is an unlikely redeemer and her mode of redemption is interesting and unexpected......but it made me laugh out loud in an Airport Concourse so all credit to Ellis for that.
This sort of throwaway clever remark is what made this book, though enjoyable, not the best Alice Thomas Ellis I have ever read. The whole novel, like this sentence, was a little too contrived. The characters in it, as I often find in her books, are slightly less surreal than La Spark's and slightly less upmarket than those of Mary Wesley. but the three women write similarly of relationship and division and disgruntled hopes. Nevertheless, whereas in Spark I find intrigue and mystery and in Wesley there is a heavily tongue in cheek fun poking, Ellis sometimes seems to stand on her honour somehow; a writer of wit and arch humour and whilst this often works and makes me smile it can sometimes drag and annoy.
The story is a simple one. Margaret is preparing for her marriage to an oily ageing creep who is her mother's age and indeed in her mother's circle. (This, incidentally, is another common upper middle class concept in this type of story, of being in 'a circle' which jars on me somehow. It serves to alienate me from the characters though maybe that is its point. )Margaret seems powerless to do anything about it. She is a demoralized rabbit caught in the very gaudy and aggressive twin headlights of maternal snobby oppression on the one hand and adolescent ennui and hopelessness on the other. Enter Lili, the larger than life femme fatale quoted at the head of the review......she enters, she perceives and then, cleverly and decisively, she manouveres.
There is mystery at the heart of the story, what is the secret Margaret is hiding which causes not her ennui but her hopelessness, her feeling only worthy of a dead life ? It is not a William Styron, Sophie style choice when we discover it but it is bleak and shocking and causes things to make a little sense.
Lili is an unlikely redeemer and her mode of redemption is interesting and unexpected......but it made me laugh out loud in an Airport Concourse so all credit to Ellis for that.
April 2, 2022
Naughty, eccentric aunts can save your life and sanity.
February 5, 2013
Delicious brooding antagonism between mother and daughter builds during the latter's wedding preparations to the unappealing Syl until Lili, with her dry red curls and a cigarette, shows up. Taut and wry and very enjoyable.
July 3, 2025
Highly enjoyable and I will be getting the follow ups — a wickedly funny and touching ending — but also at times ponderous
July 4, 2021
I picked this book up on a whim. Never heard of the author (Alice Thomas Ellis) but just had a feeling I would like her books. This is a wonderful book - not a romance or happy families - so I totally understand why people would give it one star. You need to know that it’s more of a dark comedy. There were many places where I laughed out loud. The ending (no spoiler) is a big surprise and so wonderful. The story is fully resolved, so deeply satisfying.
The writing is also exceptional. I don’t normally quote from books in book reviews but Ellis’ writing is so good!! There is really only one nice character in the book, the charming Lili, who is introduced this way by the narrator, Margaret (who is the main victim, er protagonist):
“I remembered her all my life. For years the image of her had hung in my mind like a portrait in a high room, seldom observed but unchanging.”
And later as “…the effect of an open window on a frowsty room, ice in a lukewarm drink, wind on a sullen sea.”
I loved this book so much. There is real sadness in Margaret as she struggles to find a voice:
…I woke in the night knowing I was damned. There is nothing to do about being damned. I lay in the darkness but my soul lay, the insect’s child, washed in endless light. Light made me powerless. In the dark I could manoeuvre, hide in the alleys of incomprehension, crouch behind the walls of indifference, know that I existed, and hope because I couldn’t be seen.”
“…I knew myself to be bad in a bad world, a vessel of poison afloat in a sea of poison…”
Her mother pushes Margaret towards marriage because “…my mother’s certainty that marriage represented sanity, security, good behaviour in a dangerous world of hostile winds…”
If you love books based on characters and prefer exploring darker side of relationships then I think you’ll love it. If you love true romances and happy families give this one a wide berth.
The writing is also exceptional. I don’t normally quote from books in book reviews but Ellis’ writing is so good!! There is really only one nice character in the book, the charming Lili, who is introduced this way by the narrator, Margaret (who is the main victim, er protagonist):
“I remembered her all my life. For years the image of her had hung in my mind like a portrait in a high room, seldom observed but unchanging.”
And later as “…the effect of an open window on a frowsty room, ice in a lukewarm drink, wind on a sullen sea.”
I loved this book so much. There is real sadness in Margaret as she struggles to find a voice:
…I woke in the night knowing I was damned. There is nothing to do about being damned. I lay in the darkness but my soul lay, the insect’s child, washed in endless light. Light made me powerless. In the dark I could manoeuvre, hide in the alleys of incomprehension, crouch behind the walls of indifference, know that I existed, and hope because I couldn’t be seen.”
“…I knew myself to be bad in a bad world, a vessel of poison afloat in a sea of poison…”
Her mother pushes Margaret towards marriage because “…my mother’s certainty that marriage represented sanity, security, good behaviour in a dangerous world of hostile winds…”
If you love books based on characters and prefer exploring darker side of relationships then I think you’ll love it. If you love true romances and happy families give this one a wide berth.
December 11, 2010
I'm starting to worry that ATE just keeps writing the same book... could she have got away with it if her publisher wasn't her husband? However, I’m interested in reading the rest of this trilogy. From the teasers at the back, it seems that Margaret and Syl are back on. Completely nuts, how's she going to fall into that again?
"I wanted to say that women, since they uttered human beings, had no need to make a noise, that all the bluster of music was a sad cry because the world was unevenly divided, but I couldn’t think of how to put it. I had always felt embarrassed and had to look at my feet in the presence of anyone playing any musical instrument, and had realised once when watching Syl spitting and squinting at his oboe that this was because it was irresistibly evocative of masturbation."
"I wanted to say that women, since they uttered human beings, had no need to make a noise, that all the bluster of music was a sad cry because the world was unevenly divided, but I couldn’t think of how to put it. I had always felt embarrassed and had to look at my feet in the presence of anyone playing any musical instrument, and had realised once when watching Syl spitting and squinting at his oboe that this was because it was irresistibly evocative of masturbation."
September 14, 2010
Thoroughly depressing, but all in all a good dark humored laugh. All about being forced into marriage and having choices. However, it was mostly a drunk 19's reflections on her disjointed family and their interactions with society. More specifically, it tied in reminescences of having lived in Egypt, don't want to tell specifics, but mostly all the taboos and crimes that can plague a person's conscience for life. A good short read.
June 1, 2014
This is probably my least favourite of her books I've read to date. Her other books have been really amusing and full of wicked humour but this one just seemed to have an ominous and foreboding feel to it. Although I liked the ending which in my opinion was the best part. It's the first part of a trilogy so I hope it improves as it goes on.
December 6, 2021
Watched the movie on Prime Video. Slow going plot-- but the British humor is wonderful. The best part was Jeanne Moreau, perfectly cast as the worldly and free spirited 'Lili' who drinks too much and thinks everyone else should too. She plays the biggest part in this drama, including the punchline. Great one-liners!
"I wanted to die young, but now it's too late."
"I wanted to die young, but now it's too late."
June 12, 2014
I love this book , it is so tragic yet so funny and witty. I really like all the characters , Margaret is so infuriating in her silence, but you can also really understand how trapped she feels. and Syl is so cringey. I just really like the way Alice Thomas Ellis writes with no sugar coating.
May 20, 2021
A well written novella with a dark acerbic humour that I enjoyed, however the characters were very hard to like or identify with and I had to make myself keep reading. I finished it in 2 days - 2 rail journeys but don’t feel enlightened or entertained having finished it.
August 27, 2015
Alice Thomas Ellis is a witty writer, i love her!
December 8, 2023
This was a very short read, I didn't realise at the time I started, but it's a trilogy with the three books telling the story from different points of view. This version features Margaret as the main character; a rather insipid and irritating young woman who doesn't seem to have any control over her own life. When I started the book I assumed that it was set in the 1920's or at least early last century. It seems that it was set in the 1980's when it was written and the idea that people behaved and thought like this within my own lifetime, is mad!
I felt both sorry for and annoyed by Margaret. I wanted her to do something, to take control. I won't give anything away, but I felt both annoyed and satisfied by the end of it.
Overall a good read and I would be keen to read the other two books that make the series.
I felt both sorry for and annoyed by Margaret. I wanted her to do something, to take control. I won't give anything away, but I felt both annoyed and satisfied by the end of it.
Overall a good read and I would be keen to read the other two books that make the series.
June 14, 2017
I thought it was supposed to be a childrens book. It is a story of naïve woman who is about to get married to a man who must be her father age. Though the plot had scope for lot of brilliance, the plot in this was just too predictable. The characters come off as very fake. You can easily guess how the plot is moving ahead. It was a struggle to finish it.
May 2, 2022
This so slow and boring and the ending is lack luster.
January 9, 2013
rather depressing but funny nonetheless. an easy read. this is part of a trilogy and i liked it well enough to search out the other two books
August 3, 2013
Didn't bother reading the other two in the trilogy as it just didn't capture my attention or imagination.
Displaying 1 - 18 of 18 reviews