The Dressmaker
(OverDrive Listen)

Kate Alcott. (2012). The Dressmaker. Unabridged Books on Tape.

Kate Alcott. 2012. The Dressmaker. Books on Tape.

Kate Alcott, The Dressmaker. Books on Tape, 2012.

Kate Alcott. The Dressmaker. Unabridged Books on Tape, 2012.

OverDrive Product Record

sortTitle

Dressmaker

crossRefId

583252

images

• cover:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/1191-1/{5DE181EC-9B44-4E78-9CCA-24799CF7CC16}Img100.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• thumbnail:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/1191-1/{5DE181EC-9B44-4E78-9CCA-24799CF7CC16}Img200.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover150Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/1191-1/5DE/181/EC/{5DE181EC-9B44-4E78-9CCA-24799CF7CC16}Img150.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover300Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/1191-1/5DE/181/EC/{5DE181EC-9B44-4E78-9CCA-24799CF7CC16}Img400.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg

formats

1. • identifiers:
     1. • type: 8
        • value: penguinrandomhouse_audio#9780307970138
     2. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9780307970152
   • name: OverDrive MP3 Audiobook
   • id: audiobook-mp3
2. • identifiers:
     1. • type: 8
        • value: penguinrandomhouse_audio#9780307970138
     2. • type: ISBN
        • value: 9780307970152
   • name: OverDrive Listen
   • id: audiobook-overdrive

mediaType

Audiobook

primaryCreator

• role: Author
• name: Kate Alcott

id

5de181ec-9b44-4e78-9cca-24799cf7cc16

title

The Dressmaker

starRating

3.7

dateAdded

2014-04-04T10:49:00-04:00

contentDetails

1. • href: https://link.overdrive.com/?websiteID=141&titleID=583252
   • type: text/html
   • account:
     • name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
     • id: 1151

OverDrive MetaData

isPublicDomain

False

formats

1. • duration: 11:00:53
   • fileName: DressmakerANovel-56858
   • partCount: 0
   • fileSize: 317231434
   • identifiers:
     1. • audience: retailer
        • type: 8
        • value: penguinrandomhouse_audio#9780307970138
     2. • audience: library
        • type: ISBN
        • value: 9780307970152
   • name: OverDrive Listen
   • isReadAlong: False
   • id: audiobook-overdrive
   • onSaleDate: 2/21/2012
   • samples:
     1. • source: Part 1
        • formatType: audiobook-overdrive
        • url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=5DE181EC-9B44-4E78-9CCA-24799CF7CC16&.epub-sample.overdrive.com

creators

1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Alcott, Kate
   • bioText:

     KATE ALCOTT was a reporter covering politics in Washington D.C., where she and her husband still live

   • name: Kate Alcott
2. • role: Narrator
   • fileAs: Duerden, Susan
   • name: Susan Duerden

imprint

Random House Audio

publishDate

2012-02-21T00:00:00Z

edition

Unabridged

isOwnedByCollections

True

title

The Dressmaker

fullDescription

Just in time for the centennial anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic comes a vivid, romantic, and relentlessly compelling historical novel about a spirited young woman who survives the disaster only to find herself embroiled in the media frenzy left in the wake of the tragedy.
 
Tess, an aspiring seamstress, thinks she's had an incredibly lucky break when she is hired by famous designer Lady Lucile Duff Gordon to be a personal maid on the Titanic's doomed voyage. Once on board, Tess catches the eye of two men, one a roughly-hewn but kind sailor and the other an enigmatic Chicago millionaire. But on the fourth night, disaster strikes.
 
Amidst the chaos and desperate urging of two very different suitors, Tess is one of the last people allowed on a lifeboat. Tess’s sailor also manages to survive unharmed, witness to Lady Duff Gordon’s questionable actions during the tragedy. Others—including the gallant Midwestern tycoon—are not so lucky.
 
On dry land, rumors about the survivors begin to circulate, and Lady Duff Gordon quickly becomes the subject of media scorn and later, the hearings on the Titanic. Set against a historical tragedy but told from a completely fresh angle, The Dressmaker is an atmospheric delight filled with all the period's glitz and glamour, all the raw feelings of a national tragedy and all the contradictory emotions of young love.

reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: USA Today
   • content:

     "Folds compelling story into Titanic tragedy....Seamlessly stitching fact and fiction together, Alcott creates a hypnotic tale"

2. • premium: False
   • source: Washington Post
   • content: "An unashamed girlie-book....we learn a good deal about what it was like when the ship went down. But we also follow Tess as she learns about the high-fashion business in New York."
3. • premium: False
   • source: Seattle Post Intelligencer
   • content: "Why write a Titanic story not really about the Titanic? Because what happens to the survivors makes for interesting reading.....compelling.....Her research into the Titanic, its sinking, and the hearings subsequently prompted is impeccable....fascinating.....actual historical figures become intricate characters in Alcott's hands."
4. • premium: False
   • source: NPR's All Things Considered
   • content: "If you want a fictional escape [about the Titanic], then it's time to turn to a new novel called The Dressmaker....the book explores complicated gender dynamics of the time, and offers a heroine you can really root for"
5. • premium: False
   • source: The Examiner
   • content: "Kate Alcott seamlessly stitches fact and fiction together creating this wonderfully colorful book. This story has many layers and reaches far beyond the tragedy of the Titanic....riveting....This novel is steeped in truth woven together with fiction making this Titanic tale feel like one never told before....beautifully told and really examines loss, love, survival and the choices made in between."
6. • premium: False
   • source: Huffington Post
   • content: "
     "While reading The Dressmaker, I felt as if I were actually living and breathing the events before, during and after the tragedy....The novel is filled with the atmosphere, clothes, and historical figures of the times, including the Astors, "The Unsinkable" Molly Brown, and J. Bruce Ismay, the White Star's Managing Director, who cowardly boarded a lifeboat before others."
7. • premium: False
   • source: Kirkus
   • content: "It's Titanic revisited, in a romance focused on the survivors and the scandal, seen from the perspective of an aspiring seamstress whose fortunes intertwine with real characters from the epic tragedy....interesting historical facts...an appealing, soulful freshness to this shrewdly commercial offering"
8. • premium: False
   • source: Booklist
   • content: "Brims with engrossing storytelling....For fans of Sarah Jio, Susanna Kearsley, and immigrant tales."
9. • premium: False
   • source: Book Group Buzz, A Booklist Blog
   • content: "The Dressmaker will appeal to readers of other historical book group favorites, The Paris Wife and Loving Frank."
10. • premium: False
    • source: The Book Reporter
    • content: "Thoroughly enjoyable."
11. • premium: False
    • source: Library Journal
    • content: "The 1912 sinking of the Titanic is the stone at the center of a ripple expanding to encompass the rest of the world in this fictionalized account of real historical persons and events. It is a layered story highlighting class differences and the public and private personas people put on as easily as high-fashion dresses, illustrating both the tragedy's individual torment as well as a larger wave of survivor's guilt. Multiple points of view bring many perspectives to the witch-hunt atmosphere and courtroom drama of a shocked world looking for someone to blame. By setting the story mainly in New York City, Alcott contrasts Lady Duff Gordon's lush, glittering world of high society with reporter Pinky Wade's tenement squalor and seamstress Tess Collins's ambition and longing for freedom. Tess, the fulcrum of a star-crossed love triangle with two fellow survivors, a twice-divorced wealthy American and a sailor with a talent for woodcarving, never loses her integrity as she struggles to make sense of everything. These small stories stand for hundreds of others whose voices were stolen by the tragedy as survivors faced the consequences of indiscretion and quick tongues. A low hum of background action--suffragettes and union tensions--mirrors the human costs in the disaster that besets the Titanic....will find much to think about in this story shaped by the inherent desire to know more about one of the most documented and researched tragedies in human history"
12. • premium: False
    • source: Tatiana de Rosnay, author of Sarah's Key and A Secret Kept
    • content: "We all know how the Titanic went down, we all saw the movie. But what happened after? This brilliant book shows the aftermath of the tragedy, seen through the eyes of a brave, young girl who was on board, on her way to
13. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      October 24, 2011
      The class tensions, politics, and fashion of the heady 1910s collide in this disappointingly conventional novel set aboard the Titanic and in the aftermath of its sinking. Tenacious Tess Collins, a maid determined to use her seamstress skills to transcend her class, meets world-renowned fashion designer Lucile Duff Gordon just moments before boarding the majestic and doomed ship. Lucile’s hesitant agreement to hire Tess as her personal maid sends both women on a life-altering trajectory of volatile friendship, convoluted mentoring, loyalty, and conflict, all of which comes to a head in the wake of their survival. The notoriety and familiarity of the Titanic story demands a fresh retelling, a challenge Alcott, in her fiction debut, doesn’t quite meet. Plowing into an iceberg not only sinks the Titanic, it largely sinks Alcott’s narrative, as she shifts focus to testimonies, politics, and “Pinky” Wade, a headstrong female journalist making her way in a chauvinistic world and stirring up trouble in Tess’s life. Pinky and a handful of other side characters beleaguer rather than benefit the novel, although Alcott redeems her story with Tess, managing a sweetness that stops short of cloying in her heroine’s ever-positive perseverance.

popularity

1356

links

• self:
  • href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/5de181ec-9b44-4e78-9cca-24799cf7cc16/metadata
  • type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json
• shareInLibby:
  • href: https://link.overdrive.com/share?q=VOYIAMShdiw
  • type: text/HTML

id

5de181ec-9b44-4e78-9cca-24799cf7cc16

starRating

3.7

images

• cover:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/1191-1/{5DE181EC-9B44-4E78-9CCA-24799CF7CC16}Img100.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• thumbnail:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/1191-1/{5DE181EC-9B44-4E78-9CCA-24799CF7CC16}Img200.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover150Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/1191-1/5DE/181/EC/{5DE181EC-9B44-4E78-9CCA-24799CF7CC16}Img150.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg
• cover300Wide:
  • href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/1191-1/5DE/181/EC/{5DE181EC-9B44-4E78-9CCA-24799CF7CC16}Img400.jpg
  • type: image/jpeg

isPublicPerformanceAllowed

False

languages

1. • code: en
   • name: English

subjects

1. • value: Fiction
2. • value: Literature
3. • value: Romance
4. • value: Historical Fiction

publishDateText

02/21/2012

mediaType

Audiobook

shortDescription

Just in time for the centennial anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic comes a vivid, romantic, and relentlessly compelling historical novel about a spirited young woman who survives the disaster only to find herself embroiled in the media frenzy left in the wake of the tragedy.
 
Tess, an aspiring seamstress, thinks she's had an incredibly lucky break when she is hired by famous designer Lady Lucile Duff Gordon to be a personal maid on the Titanic's doomed voyage. Once on board, Tess catches the eye of two men, one a roughly-hewn but kind sailor and the other an enigmatic Chicago millionaire. But on the fourth night, disaster strikes.
 
Amidst the chaos and desperate urging of two very different suitors, Tess is one of the last people allowed on a lifeboat. Tess’s sailor also manages to survive unharmed, witness to Lady Duff Gordon’s questionable actions during the tragedy. Others—including the gallant Midwestern...

sortTitle

Dressmaker

crossRefId

583252

publisher

Books on Tape

bisacCodes

1. • code: FIC014000
   • description: FICTION / Historical / General
2. • code: FIC019000
   • description: Fiction / Literary
3. • code: FIC027050
   • description: Fiction / Romance / Historical / General