The Dressmaker (Bainbridge novel) The Dressmaker (Bainbridge novel) The Dressmaker (US title The Secret Glass) is a gothic psychological novel written by Beryl Bainbridge. In 1973, it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Like many of Bainbridge's earlier works, the novel is semi-autobiographical. In particular, the story was inspired by a relationship that she had with a soldier as a teenager. The characters of Nellie and Margo were based upon two of her paternal aunts. Set in Liverpool and Lancashire during World War II, a repressed dressmaker and her sister struggle looking after their 17-year-old niece, who is having a delusional affair with an
The Woman Who Was Poor have led Jacques Maritain back to Mother Church will baffle most admirers of that subtle, first-class mind. "Kirkus Reviews" wrote that the novel does not "move with swift and arresting action", but has "passages of great beauty and the character delineation [is] interesting". The critic wrote that the book "is saturated with Catholic thought and allusions, but is by nomeans just a pietistic tract in novel form, for Leon Bloy was an accomplished novelist." The Woman Who Was Poor The Woman Who Was Poor () is an 1897 novel by the French writer Léon Bloy. It follows a woman, Clotilde,