July 15, 2021
Essays in celebration of artisans. At first glance, the worlds of fashion and fishing may appear to be disparate topics, but using poetic language, childhood experiences, and knowledge of cultural history, Deming captivatingly weaves together these communities. Inspired by a 2016 exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art featuring Yves Saint Laurent's "sardine dress," the author set out to learn more about the artisans who have made an impact on her life. Among them are her maternal ancestors, who ran a couture dressmaking business "in Manhattan from the Gilded Age to the Great Depression," and the herring fishermen on Grand Manan Island in New Brunswick, Canada, where she spent her childhood summers. Deming laments "the world's dismissal of makers in favor of manufacturers," which has "driven such small-scale artistry into obsolescence." In a fascinating journey, she takes us around the world, from New Brunswick to New York to Paris and beyond, chasing leads and sifting through archives and sharing her family's history and her own quest for continuity and belonging. Deming lovingly describes her grandmother's skills cutting fabric and sewing together an elegant dress without a pattern as well as her remarkable ability to give new life to the author's boring, secondhand prom dress. She also expresses the same childhood admiration and excitement in her descriptions of watching the fishermen on the island pull their bounties from the sea. "How much human life depended on the sea and the people's ability to make vessels and nets and ropes and sails and salt, and to read water and sky and stars. Their ability to survive unimaginable hardship." A running theme is the detachment between mother and daughter that has plagued Deming's family for at least two generations, ultimately leading to her grandmother's being buried in an unmarked grave and listed as having no heirs. At times, the details repeat across the essays, but this takes little away from the book's overall high quality. A charming, heartfelt homage to the makers, past and present, who have defined lives and communities across the world.
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July 1, 2021
Deming's engaging and poetic memoir deepens with her in-depth exploration of her foremothers as well as her ties to her inherited house in the Canadian Maritimes. Through a grant, scholar and writer Deming (Zoologies, 2014) takes a journey to discover lineage and heritage. Her inspiration begins with the Metropolitan Museum's 2016 costume exhibit, where she zeroed in on Yves St. Laurent's sardine dress. The connection? Her maternal grandparents started their own couture business, first in Paris and then transported to Manhattan. Through photographs and snippets of documents, this herstory of fashion looks at specific garments and processes--Mom's seal-skin coat, stone weirs (how fisherfolk catch herring), lacemaking through a 1670 Vermeer portrait--then segues to the once-abundant fishing in the Bay of Fundy. In the end, Deming's memoir is a tribute to all makers, whether of high-fashion dressmaking or weir construction, with a view to the losses in environment and culture of our time.
COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
August 2, 2021
In this lyrical memoir, poet and essayist Deming (Zoologies) traces the role of handiwork in her life and the lives of her ancestors, highlighting the “painful fact” of a vanishing world of simplicity and beauty. She recounts summers spent in a Canadian fishing village once celebrated as “the sardine capital of the world,” where a “handmade, place-made way of life is nearly over.” A viewing of a fish-scale-inspired Yves Saint Laurent dress prompts memories of her grandmother and great-grandmother, both dressmakers, and sparks an investigation into their lives, taking her to New York and Paris, where she’s “resigned to find in fragments a picture of the whole.” In episodic spurts, Deming picks a topic, researches it, then investigates its relationship to her life; among the subjects considered are the origin of camel hair coats, the history of herring, and environmental degradation as a result of industrialization. Deming has a poet’s eye for details—she describes the shingles of her family’s 150-year-old house as “herring scales” and imagines the previous tenants “in beds together packed like sardines”—but the overall collage-like assemblage can feel a bit hodgepodge. Champions of a home-crafted way of life will find much to savor here—but they’d be best served reading in small doses. Agent: Laura Blake Peterson, Curtis Brown.