Jumping between London and Ireland, it can feel like two distinct works, about two distinct women
The Wardrobe Department by Elaine Garvey: Evocation of youthful self-discovery is well wrought and truthfulCo Sligo. Mairéad works as a dresser for a West End theatre. They’re putting on a production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, and she has a futile crush on the actor playing Astrov.
The company has an exploitative working culture, and sexual harassment is an occupational hazard. Mairéad is pestered by a creepy colleague ; Oliver abuses his powerful position to have his way with various actors. Hitherto shy and timorous, in these sections Garvey’s narrator-protagonist shows steel, standing up to Felim and refusing to feel guilty about it. As her family rehash old beefs, she appraises them with the wry distance of a theatre critic: “To their credit, they played it as if they had not heard the words before: the disbelief, the hurt feelings, the amazement at each other came across as genuinely fresh.’’ Peace breaks out over a packet of custard creams.
In some respects, the cultural landscape of the early 2000s feels very distant indeed. It was long before #MeToo, and pay phones were still a thing. To emigrate in a pre-smartphone world was a qualitatively lonelier undertaking than it would be today. Sisterly solidarity, together with the kindness shown to her in London by fellow migrants – her Muslim landlord and the company’s Romanian cleaner – will help Mairéad through the transition.
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