Isabelle, Mary and Lauren have been friends since college
but have now reached the age where their peers go one way (marriage, mortgage,
procreation) or the other (job-hopping, bed-hopping, bar-hopping). The loveably dysfunctional trio attend wedding after wedding
while muddling through the unexpected turns their own lives take.
Each chapter focusses on a different character and delves
into the nominated narrator’s own life, blinkering against the other girls’
issues and problems. This not only helps you connect with every single girl, but
also helps you recognise how, despite having a close-knit support system,
everyone suffers, tackles and conquers life’s challenges largely on their own,
with inner-reserves of strength and humility.
Girls in White Dresses is a real anthem for those who feel
like everyone except them is where they should be in life, with a better job,
relationship and lifestyle. The author doesn’t conform to the ‘life porn’ trap as with
most chick-lit, her characters have pokey, affordable apartments and steady, dull
jobs, there’s no chic city loft-living or inexhaustible income streams, you can
actually relate to these women.
Again mirroring real life, you don’t notice the characters
growing up and despite the pace settling in the last few chapters, at the last
page it’s suddenly alarming how different they all are from the college girls
we met at the beginning.
This witty, heartfelt work of fiction resonates more than
most autobiographies as well as being both clever and readable.
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