The Dressmaker - Rosalie Ham

After twenty years away, Myrtle Dunnage returns to Dungatar - a small country town whose people's eccentricities are many and varied.  From Sergeant Farrat's predilection for cross-dressing, to pharmacist Almanac's retributive scheme of potion dispensing, not forgetting extra-marital affairs and assorted dark secrets, it seems that everyone in town has a seamier side. But none of these can compare to the sin of Tilly and her mother: to have come from somewhere else.  At first ostracised, the townspeople gradually accept her in order to make use of her extraordinary dressmaking skills and, at last, Tilly feels that she might have found home.

But small towns are strange places where vanity rules, and, once again reviled, Tilly sets out to teach the town a lesson. In the process she faces the ghosts of her past, and wreaks a havoc that provides a most satisfying revenge.

This is a story of love, hate and haute couture. A warm and nasty book, The Dressmaker evokes Drysdale's 'Drover's Wife' dressed in Chanel. 

The above blurb is from the publisher's website.  I think it's more insightful and accurate than the one on the back of the book.  I particularly like the description 'warm and nasty'.  One thing I've wondered is:  for a town so vain and so obsessed with appearances, how come they don't have a beauty parlour?  It could have been a really good setting for vanity, bad taste and bitchiness of the town's inhabitants - not to mention visits on the sly by Sergeant Farrat.

What do you think of the book so far?

Do you know, or have you lived in, a town like Dungatar?