There are two things you should know about Five Roses and its author:

1. The title Five Roses is taken from the FARINE FIVE ROSES sign, lighted red letters visible on the southern skyline of Montreal since 1948. In 2006, the new owners of the flour mill turned off the lights, but Montrealers successfully reversed the decision by designating the sign as an iconic landmark.
2. Author Alice Zorn lost her own sister to suicide and writes from a place of painfully true experience.

I mention these because, to me, they are the roots of the novel’s biggest strengths: a sense of place and a sense of loss. Five Roses tells the story of three women who live in Montreal in 2005, and each narrates her own part of the story. One of them, Fara, buys a house with her husband, and learning that the previous owner’s son committed suicide brings up painful memories of her own sister’s death. In one of the most powerful scenes of the novel, Fara muses that “all death is final, but suicide isn’t just dying. It’s choosing death.” She also points out that

…losing a sibling is  very specific kind of loss. It’s not like a parent who was in charge and took care of you. Your sibiling is the other kid who was there while you were growing up. Even if you didn’t have a good relationship, your sibling is part of you in a way no one else is — and probably even more so if your parents weren’t around or not really there for you.” (p. 168)

Being very close to my own sister, the above scene struck a chord in me. Later on, Fara recounts how, before her sister committed suicide, she asked around for someone to take her of her cat for a few days while she went away. Fara declined because she was allergic to cats, but I can just imagine the guilt she must be feeling, however irrational. Knowing about the author’s own experience, I can only wonder how difficult and/or cathartic it must have been to write about Fara’s experiences, and I enjoyed the somewhat subdued, thoughtful approach to the subject.

The second protagonist, Maddy, lost her daughter to a kidnapper in 1978, and finds somewhat of a daughter figure in a co-worker at a bakery, Yushi. Maddy is the narrator, but for me, it’s Yushi who stole the stage in these sections. I loved reading about her cooking, and I was moved by the story of her past as a pastry chef. Maddy asks why Yushi is bagging bread when she could be a pastry chef, and Yushi’s answer is beautifully evasive, hinting at a much deeper story: “If you can’t do what you want to do, it’s better to do nothing at all.”

The third narrator is Rose, Yushi’s roommate who grew up in a cabin in the woods and wants to learn more about her past. Her story involves much more than simply finding out the truth behind her birth, but to be honest, her character didn’t really interest me as much as the others.

The FIVE ROSES sign was brought up several times in the story, first in the prologue as a place marker and port in the storm to the woman who would raise Rose, and later, the sign prompts Rose to share a story she learned from her mother, about a girl alone in the woods whose only friends were five roses who named her Rose. Rose wasn’t sure why the story felt so significant, but it’s the only story her mother ever told. The significance of this sign makes Montreal almost as much as character as the three women, and the story somehow renders it a maternal feel, fitting into the novel’s themes of family and loss.

The story meanders, and the payoff feels mundane, but in a way that feels deliberate. It’s as if Zorn drops us into these characters’ lives then all-so-delicately lifts us out again. Overall, it didn’t quite work for me — I sympathized with the characters but never really connected with them, and while I enjoyed some of the scenes, I never really cared enough about the story to lose myself in it. Still, Zorn’s descriptions are evocative, and her characters feel broken in ways that are tangible and real. Montreal as written by Zorn appears on the cusp of a shift of some kind, and while I can’t quite articulate why, it feels like the characters are at a similar point in their lives. There seems more to this story than I got out of it, and while I wasn’t quite hooked, I can see its appeal to other readers.

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BLOG TOUR

My blog is the first stop on a weeklong blog tour for the Five Roses launch in Canada. For other perspectives on this book, check out the schedule below:

• July 25: Literary Treats
• July 26: Just a Lil Lost
• July 27: Padfoots Library
• July 28: Literary Hoarders
• July 29: Lost in a Great Book

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Thank you to Dundurn Press for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Nine Women, One Dress is the perfect rom com of a novel, an utter treat I’ll definitely be dipping into time and again, and will probably stock in a place of honour beside my Devil Wears Prada DVD. Not that the story is anything like Devil Wears Prada; with its lightly interconnected stories of love and life, Nine Women, One Dress is more reminiscent of Love Actually than anything else. But like both movies, it’s a fun, lighthearted experience with unexpected moments of depth. It’s a comedy with heart, and I absolutely fell in love with its characters.

The story revolves around a single, classic little black dress that became the designer It dress of the season. A young model wears it on the runway and lands a magazine cover on her very first gig. An unemployed Brown graduate creates a fake life of success using Instagram photos yet the dress adds an unexpected twist to her career path. A teenager in a traditional Muslim household tries the dress on and gains a better understanding of her sister’s desire for a different life.

The main story lines are about love. Bloomingdale’s saleswoman Natalie is invited to be the beard for a movie star who needs to dispel rumours that he’s gay. She wears the dress to his movie premiere, and it’s just the cutest love story ever. Another highlight for me is a fairly minor but multilayered subplot about the dressmaker Morris, an almost-90 year old who has been cutting dress patterns all his life. I love the story of his immigration to America, and I love how the story comes full circle with the dress becoming instrumental in his grandson’s love life.

But my favourite story by far is that of Felicia, a middle aged executive assistant who has been secretly in love with her boss for almost twenty years. The little black dress and a matchmaking Bloomingdale’s salesman give her the chance of a lifetime, and I admit at times wanting to skim over the other stories just to find out how hers turns out. (As an aside, the matchmaking salesman is Natalie’s co-worker Tómas, and I’m thrilled that he too gets a mini-love story of his own.)

As can be expected with such a story structure and with less than 300 pages, we get mere snippets of these characters’ stories, and with the exception of possibly one or two, we barely get a chance to dive deep into their lives and how things turn out for them. In some cases, this feels a shame; for example, I would have been interested in learning more of the Muslim teenager’s story after she tried the dress on. But on the other hand, the dipping in and out of people’s lives is also a huge part of this structure’s appeal. You do still end up caring for many of these characters, and in a way, the bite sized snippets of their stories are just the perfect snack.

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Thank you to Penguin Random House Canada for an advance reading copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.