The Last Days of the National Costume

GoGo Sligo has abandoned literary studies for stitchcraft. She lives with her husband Art, a PhD student from a wealthy Taranaki family, in a damp half-converted house in Arch Hill, plunged into darkness by the Auckland blackout of 1998. Her small business mends torn clothes, and she has grown curious about the truths and lies behind each rip. When a young woman in tartan Doc Martens brings in an Irish dancing dress to be repaired with invisible stitching, GoGo is drawn into the dress's origins and the fears of a family in Belfast. Like the storytellers of old she keeps putting off the finished job to draw out the tale, while her own marriage and her in-laws' troubles come into view. Sewing and writing mirror each other throughout.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Love, Family (assigned by AI)

Set in

New Zealand, 1998

First published

2013

Author's age

54 when first published

ISBN

9781743313862 (Allen & Unwin, Australia)