The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard

by Erin McGraw

A Kansas seamstress reinvents herself in Los Angeles, but the past comes back to haunt her, in this “superb, surprising” historical novel (The Seattle Times). At age seventeen, Nell Plat is an unhappily married woman, quick with her needle and wit, but ill-suited to wifely duties like cooking, mothering, and tending to her boorish husband. Unable to shake her dreams of glamour and excitement, she abandons her family and quiet life in Kansas for the hustle, bustle, and glittering lights of Los Angeles.   Among the wannabes and celebrities of the silver screen, Nell reinvents herself as Madame Annelle, seamstress to the stars. But just as she begins stitching her way to success, her past shows up on her doorstep, threatening to unravel her carefully crafted ruse.   “Meticulously researched” (The A.V. Club) and “vibrant with historical accuracy” (SFGate)—based on the true story of the author’s grandmother—The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard is a fascinating look at old Hollywood glamour, gender roles, and the ever-evolving American dream.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Book Club, Womens, Chick Lit, Adult Fiction, Adult

409 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 1, 2008

Reviews

[Oolookitty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really loved this up until the time that there's an unexpected visitation at the house, and then the whole thing fell apart for me. There's this great setup with this young woman going to Hollywood to become a seamstress/modiste, and breaking into the movies, and then that whole part of the book just goes away. The protagonist is an interesting character, but Lisette and Aimee are like cartoons, and the book descends into melodrama, the entire premise just gets thrown up in the air, and it's really disappointing.

The writer has a lot of talent and I'll definitely look for more books from her, but I hope the next one has a better structured story that doesn't throw the premise, and all the build, away three-quarters of the way in.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVED this book. A girl wants to make a better life for herself, works hard, finds a way only to have her past come back and threaten it all. This book gives a very detailed image of life in the early 1900's and Los Angeles just as Hollywood was blooming. As a seamstress, I was hanging on every description of every dress. As a Southern Californian, I recognized how early LA became its own little world. As a parent that started very young, I connected on a level that many may not understand.

[Patti · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book. The story of a young girl who makes a plan, takes a chance, and creates a life for herself, this book had all the chances to become a great read. However, the heroine kept losing my attention, her husband was far too predictable, their actions frequently made them less than sympathetic. It should have been better than it was.

[Melinda · Rating 3 out of 5]

A well written, interesting book. It's the story of Nell - later known as Madame Annelle- who grows up poor and unhappy in Kansas in ?? I think the early 1900s. She begins the book with the line: "I couldn’t cook but I could sew. It would have been better the other way around.” She marries at the age of 15 and starts having babies in the sod house which she shares with her husband and in laws. In here spare (!) time she begins sewing for the women of the town. She dreams of another life and leaves on the train for Hollywood, leaving her family and Kansas behind- but not forgotten. the vivid visual descriptions of Kansas, the details of the clothing and fabrics, her living accommodations in California, her work in the movies are endlessly fascinating to me. When Kansas comes to Hollywood, Nell's life changes once again in some good and some not so good ways, but again it is all well written and interesting. There was one character, her friend Rose, who I would have liked more development and continuity of, but that is my only complaint. I truly enjoyed the book.

[Laila · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, so I loved this book until about halfway through, when it sort of lost steam. I kept on reading, though, just to see what happened. It's an interesting time period and setting, and the premise of the novel was good, but by the end I wasn't sure if I could root for any of the characters or not. And I need someone to root for.

[Brooke Hostetler · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book really hooked me in at the beginning buy it did get very slow in the middle. I am glad I read it, and would give it another half star if I could.

[Ka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Erin McGraw spoke at this year's Dallas Baptist University DOXA Conference (2016). She was mesmerizing. She read from her book, Better Food for a Better World, which I thought would be boring and too factual - you know, about how I should do a better job of choosing my food intake or how to grow better vegetables. Not so. This reading, too, was mesmerizing. I'm not even sure I breathed while she read! After a nice chat over a tasty but not too nutritious lunch, I ended up buying two copies of her The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard, one for me, and one for my bestie, who is fascinated with old Hollywood. Then I put my copy aside and lived a busy life. Recently I picked it up just because it was there. And I couldn't put it down! What a wonderful read.

Though the protagonist, Nell Presser AKA Nell Plat AKA Mrs. Jack Plat AKA Madame Annelle AKA Nell Curran AKA Mrs. George Curran isn't a likeable person, but she is one of the most interesting characters I've ever met, in person or in a book. Not exactly a liar, Nell does run away from a life that is less than what she wants, and she begins a new life that eventually turns out to be all she dreamed and hoped it could be. And then visitors arrive on her doorstep. Nell remains less than likeable as she negotiates the twists and turns the strangers who are family bring into her dream life.

Because I cannot tolerate spoilers, I won't share too many details. What I will say is that McGraw is a master story teller. Her details add depth that allows the reader to escape the room she's in and travel to the past, to the settings, to see it, to taste it, to nearly touch it. Nell's personality jumps right off the page, and she's knowable: her secrets believable, her actions understandable - even when she ought to, perhaps, choose other options. All of us have talents, and all of us have ineptitudes, and Nell is no exception. She can sew like a magician, but she cannot cook an edible meal. It's how Nell uses her gift to change her life that givse a reader pause, but it also draws the audience in. What will she do next? Love her or hate her, Nell captivates, stuns, and entertains.

Kudos to Erin McGraw for an outstanding read. Write another soon because I'll finish the rest of your works in record time!

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nell Platt sure is a contemporary woman trapped in the late Victorian age. The novel starts out in the very early 1900's on a farm in rural Kansas. Nell's favorite thing to do in the world is sew. She's her happiest then and feels it's her true talent. She can copy anything from an idea to a picture in a magazine and slowly she begins to create wonderful dresses for whatever upper class exists in her tiny town. As word of her talent spreads, Nell finds herself wanting to escape the farm life to a better life where she can sew to her heart's content.

Unfortunately life gets in her way. Married at 15, pregnant at 16, 2 babies by 17, Nell begins to quietly start saving for an escape to California to start a new life. She ultimately leaves her babies and husband behind and reinvents herself near Hollywood. After several years of work, Nell becomes a business woman in her own right, working for herself. She ultimately meets a new man, they marry and have a child. Just when her dreams of dressmaking for the pictures starts to become a reality, the past shows up knocking at her door.

I think the think that most intrigues me about this book is that it was based on the author's grandmother's life. As to how much or which parts, I'm left to wonder. I was hoping for some good author's notes at the back of the book but I was disappointed that there weren't. Nell was truly a woman ahead of her time.

[Wavelength · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nell Plat is a young girl living a dreary life on the plains of Kansas at the turn of the century. She marries young, and begins having babies. Her one gift is her ability to design and sew clothes and to daydream about the possibility of a different life. By taking on extra work as a seamstress, she is able to save enough money to leave Kansas and her husband and two children and escape to Hollywood. Here was my first problem with the book, Nell had no remorse. Every time she started to think about her two children, she blocked out the pain. I followed her as she got work as a shop girl and lived in a boarding house and then started to develop a clientele. She reinvents herself as Madame Annelle, marries, has another child, and goes to work for a designer in Hollywood. And then...poof, her two children appear on her doorstep...they found her. Second BIG problem with the book...she has moved across the country, changed her name and they managed to find her..yeah right. I slogged through the rest of the book because of the person who recommended it, but I could have easily put it down.

[Phair · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fairly interesting but I didn't get a strong sense of the period (early 1900s thru 1920s). I wanted more about the seamstress part and less about the domestic issues. I also would have liked more emphasis on the early film making in Hollywood. While those two topics (fashion & Hollywood) were what drew me to the book, in the end I found the earlier part about her life as a teenage wife in a soddy in Kansas to be the most interesting part of the book. There was some good description of the changing dress styles and mores over the period so overall this was a good but not great read for me.

[Martin Turnbull · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those books I knew I was going to like by the end of the first page—and I did. Although I thought the middle suffered a little from plot inertia—not a lot, but a little—I still very much enjoyed the skillful way the author drew her characters. I thought they rang so true that now I’ve finished the book, I find myself still thinking about them and missing reading about them. To my way of thinking, that’s the measure of a really good book.

[Lydia · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book but I could not get into it at all

[Marcia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read for a book club and disliked intensely.

[Jane · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a slog.

The lead character is constantly dripping sarcasm (and not the funny British kind) and is wholly unlikeable. This is really not about how sewing saved someone's life, nor any kind of miraculous discovery of latent talent that leads to fame and fortune. Instead, it's a book full of quite miserable (if not downright nasty) people going through all kinds of terrible woes.

A really aggravating point is that this woman's life is pretty much centered around sewing garments - not designing, mind you (there was not a hint that she would even have been interested in that), but in taking existing designs and tweaking them to perfection so each garment is personalized to the buyer's body; she also added her own flourishes. Not that there's anything wrong with that (I personally am great at copying and absolutely lousy at having original thoughts when it comes to anything creative), but she never seems to enjoy what she's doing. I think the book tries to present her sewing as a driving force for getting out of poverty, but not a personal passion - which is weird considering the enormous chunk of time out of her life that she spends creating garments.

Additionally, this writer's style is of what I call the "thought shorthand" style. You know how you have folks you live with/love/are partnered with for many years and they finish your sentences or blurt out the exact same words that are coming out of your own mouth? When people like that talk to each other, they often end up using "verbal shorthand" - fewer words, odder word choices, things that save time but only make sense to the people talking. (My wife and I do it all the time. We actually have to adjust our speech patterns when we are out in the world, because we almost have our own language at this point. I think this is pretty common, actually.) Much of the interactions in this book are written in this manner. A lot of the time I had no true idea what was going on in terms of undercurrents, even though the author took care to let the reader know that "hell, yeah, there are definite undercurrents in this dialogue" (and there were LOTS of conversations that were just laden with undercurrents because the people in this book were consistently miserable and always sniping at each other.) I think writers can get caught up in the fact that they know what the characters mean when they say XYZ to each other, but they forget to let the readers in on it as well. Very frustrating.

Wouldn't really recommend.

[Rachel Bonar · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was intrigued by the story in the beginning but I became uninterested when I had a quarter of the book left to read. I think the story went on too long after the climax hit. The timeline of events was confusing; the reader is not sure what year events are happening, or at what speed time is passing. There was one chapter where I think the character starts off in her 20s and by the end of the chapter she is in her thirties. The descriptions of Los Angeles in the early 1910s-1920s were nice. I started off having sympathy for the character but by the end I felt indifferent. I just wanted the story to end.

[Caasi Bartle · Rating 4 out of 5]

When your old life comes a-knocking... I admired the character's determination and refusal to stay in bad situations, even if she was criticized at the time period (1920s) as being 'selfish'. You can't expect a 17 year old to give up her life to raise children. I had the same reaction as the character when they showed up years later, greedily trying to blackmail her into getting them into the movies. 'No, go away, I don't know you!' Kind of had mixed feelings about the end, but overall, an enjoyable read.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting read and I liked her style. I never would have thought to combine a poor seamstress from the midwest with the potential glamor of Hollywood. I enjoyed her complicated (or maybe simple?) characters along with her story line.

[Diana Tarrazo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loveeeed this book! Read it on a whim after finding it at a local bookstore and it quickly became one of my favorites. I didn't want to put it down! Nell is a strong protagonist who isn’t perfect but that makes the read all the more fascinating. Definitely worth the read!!

[Helena Trofa · Rating 2 out of 5]

something was off with the writing, sometimes i was really hooked other times i was completely day dreaming while reading. I don’t really understand why because the actual set up of the book was great but where was i half the time?

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't love this book but it ended with redeeming thoughts

[Alycia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pretty unsympathetic main character but if I had to get married and have kids at 15 while living in the middle of nowhere Kansas, I might be this rotten and leave for the coast too.

[Shazi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Intriguing. But too slow. Gets boring once the daughters arrive. The ending is lacking hugely! All in all, a very intense read. Not my kind.

[Bette White · Rating 5 out of 5]

California Dream

A book to live in. The descriptions so vivid with color and turn of phrase. I could not stop reading.

[Hillary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Really wanted to love this one, and I did like it (real rating would be like a 2.75), but it just stayed slow when it could have had a rich, faster story line and kept you more engaged.

[Monica · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nell’s story – her struggle to fit into the mold of wife and mother at such a young age; her escape from that life and the emotional struggles she experiences; the adventure of living in a new city and creating a new life; her growth from girl to woman and how her relationships affect and are influenced by that growth – is compelling enough and the historical setting and fashion aspects are very interesting. If the book had, perhaps, continued with the protagonist’s personal and professional growth and awareness, it could have really been exceptional.

Once the plot shifts dramatically with unexpected visitors at Nell’s door, though, the entire tone and style of writing change. That’s really the problem I have with the book – I couldn’t get a “read” on any of the characters after this shift. Perhaps this is because the dialogue went on and on in most parts with little substantial content and no way for me to gauge the characters’ emotions and intentions. It nearly seemed to me that the end of the book was written by a completely different person.

By the last few chapters, I honestly didn’t care what happened to the characters and that’s the problem – I HAD cared, in the beginning. So to then be thrown into such a different style where it was difficult to understand where the characters were coming from and what they wanted was very disappointing. I could have followed Ms. McGraw down any plot path she wanted, no matter how absurd or seemingly implausible, if only she had continued with the same level of character depth and desire for growth with which she began the story. By the very end, she almost got there, but it was too little, too late.

[J.I.]

Like her short fiction, McGraw uses short, quick stabs at description to describe her characters and their surroundings. While this works well in her short stories, it works so much better here. The character of Nell, a girl married young in Kansas quickly comes out from the details we get of her. When she abandons her life, including her husband and two children, the same short, quick writing describes her state of mind and how she thought or did not think about her children. By the time Nell is sewing for the women of Pasadena, the character of Nell is so vibrantly wrought, though progressive, tiny details that she seems absolutely real and believable.

What good excuses does a mother have for leaving her children? What are those women like? Thankfully, this book doesn't try to answer these questions. We have a good idea why Nell left and we have a good idea of how she dealt with it, but the reasons and excuses are largely unsaid. When a character supposes some ideas later in the book (not to give anything away), Nell leaps on the idea and claims it, even though it doesn't gel with the rest of the story. In this way even she doesn't really know completely, and it's doubtful if she ever will. Likewise, the characters in this novel do things they can't really explain just as often as they make conscious, wise decisions--like actual people. The way this book succeeds most is in it's vivid portrayal of life and of humanity, through all of the sorrow and the joy, as temporary as they both can be.

[Alissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took me awhile to get into this historical fiction story but once I did it was an interesting read.

Nell Platt lives on the Kansas plains in the late 1800s. In 1901 she leaves her two small children and moves to Los to recreate herself. Her only skill in life was sewing, which was what gave her the money to escape the farm life. In Los Angeles she slowly builds a reputation as a fine seamstress. She marries, has another child, and life seems perfect until one day a knock on her door reveals the past she thought she left behind.

Although it takes place in another time, the only historical details I picked up on were the changing styles of women’s fashion. Nell is very much her own modern woman and this story could’ve easily taken place today as well as 100 years ago. The ending didn’t tie things up and I didn’t have a good sense of closure. But Nell is interesting and I enjoyed this tale about her.

[Christiana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed all but the last 3rd of this book. It's not that I didn't enjoy the whole thing, but I thought the last 3rd needed re-work.

Looking back on my experiences babysitting (many overnights while divorced mother worked in NYC) as a 16-18 year old and today as a mother who had her children in her 30s, I could identify with Nell as she reflected between her children and the different mother she was.

While not a sewer but always wished I could be one (I mean be any good at sewing), I found the parts about making clothes, improving upon them very interesting. When she finally realized her professional dream and started sewing costumes, I felt how she was ultimately fired was odd -especially since she was ordered to sew a dress for a studio head's girlfriend -and that girlfriend and Nell knew and liked each other while in Kansas. Seems like strings could have been pulled there. Or it just goes with the last 3rd of the book I didn't like.

[Cathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this a lot. McGraw tells the story, supposedly based on the life of her grandmother, of a young housewife who runs away from her ghastly life in hardscrabble turn-of-the-century Kansas, leaving her two baby daughters behind. Nell lands in Hollywood and works her way up from a shop-assistant to a career as a self-styled "modiste" and then Hollywood costumer. In the process she marries and has another daughter, but of course in a story like this one the past never stays buried ...

The details of Los Angeles in the teens and '20s were fascinating, but the main attraction of this book for me is McGraw's deft prose and insightful voice. It's a pretty conventional story, but she tells it very well.

[Jishi · Rating 3 out of 5]

In one of my quests for non-romance novels, I found this on sale in PowerBooks; and the life in the early part of the 1900s pulled at me and the added incentive of fashion in that era. It turned out as a serious novel about a girl who left home, her husband and two daughters to escape the suffocating world that she grew up in and build a new one in Los Angeles, in glamor and excitement. The past caught up with her though, when years after, her two daughters showed up and threatened the balance that she finally found.



People make mistakes. What counts is what the person does to own up to the mistake and take steps to make things right again.

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