My Little Blue Dress: A Memoir (Paperback)

The cleverest thing about "My Little Blue Dress" (and there is no drought of cleverness in this book - Crichton lovers better watch out too) is that the surprise ending is not the expected surprise. This means at least that I can talk about the expected surprise without anyone going "boo, spoilsport!" (except the Archer readers, but the less said about them the better).

Ostensibly, "My Little Blue Dress" is the memoir of a female centenarian, born on 1 Jan 1900 and with many a tale to tell of the times this land forgot. She grew up in Murbery, England, where she was a cert for May Queen by the age of five; fell in love with a local boy who deserted her for the trenches of the First World War; went to France in the 20s where she associated with the artists of the Left Bank; became a nanny in the thirties; and -

What's that? All sounds a bit formulaic? Well, yes, it does - and that's where the jokes start. You see, the unnamed narrator doesn't know an awful lot about, well, anything (an Anthony Trollope aficionado, no doubt) and her account of the times she lived in could have been written by anyone. Her speech, too, is over-sophisticated, her worldview frankly out of synch, and all I can say about her sexual peccadilloes is that they might at least provide a way into this book for Jilly Cooper fans.

And here's the "twist" (close your eyes if you don't want to know) - "My Little Blue Dress" is actually being written by the old woman's neighbour, a certain Bruno Maddox, twentysomething young man who has (possibly) killed her to reap the publisher's cool million. This is the heart of the book, and it works like a charm - the witty juxtaposition of Maddox's ignorance of the early 20th century with his expectations of what it might have been like is always hilarious. When his old woman was a nanny, he quotes Mary Poppins; when she moves to the USA in the fifties, it's Stepford. And he is ever ready with a handy excuse for the apparent contradictions: she is "allergic to the Past" her "grandda" tells her darkly as a child; when Maddox cannot imagine what it is like to be in love with a man, he makes her a lesbian; her (his) all-encompassing ignorance of history is explained by a rare condition known as "information phobia."

It's superb. But. After the first hundred pages, the "old woman" starts to tell us about her present day life and more and more the book becomes the recent diary of Bruno Maddox. And not since Martin Amis played chess with John Self in "Money" has an author so brazenly cameo'd in his own work. And we keep reading this with relish for a time, wondering what his motives are, trying to guess how he is going to cover up her murder. There's nothing, after all, so nourishing as an unreliable narrator.

Unfortunately the book stays with Bruno Maddox and of the subsequent 200 pages, it is really only the last few, where the *real* twist becomes clear (which I am definitely not going to tell you - hell, why should I be the only one to suffer?), that are truly satisfying. Of course Maddox, still in character as the old woman, has the good grace to apologise for having "wasted so much of your time." It's not enough, though, and smacks of Dave Eggers's truthful admission in "A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius" that from page 109 "the book thereafter is kind of uneven." At least Eggers had the grace to tell you that *before* you read the book.

What "My Little Blue Dress" ends up as, then, is a sort of pale imitation of Nabokov's "Pale Fire:" this too is a great idea which is best left as an idea and only weakens and dilutes itself when written down and read. But I am giving it four stars anyway, mainly for the first hundred pages, which really are priceless and brilliant; but also, secretly, for having the balls to disappoint.

Unfortunately I liked the ill-informed old lady stuff a bit more than the contemporary New York stuff which was good, but not as original and brilliant as the period interludes- 'and it turned out it *was* jet lag''- and I would have loved to have followed the old lady all the way through the decades, especially given the hilarity of the chapter outlines.

BUT, line for line it is still the funniest book I've read in ages, smart, selfconscious, and, by the end, oddly sweet.

Great. You won't be disappointed.