Xmas Book Scenes – Department Store Sales

 

 

Christmas Book Scenes!  During December I like to post entries which are more Christmas in Books than Clothes in Books, and kind readers say it puts them in a seasonal mood.

If you have a favourite Christmas book or scene not featured yet – please let me know

 

Women in Black by Madeleine St John

aka Ladies in Black

published 1993

set in 1960

 

 

 

[book extract:]The scene which met the military eye of the Ruritanian army officer [doorman], as he ushered Lady Pyrke through the doorway of Goode’s at eleven a.m. on Christmas Eve, was pandemonium, with sound effects complete. To the obligato of a hundred intense conversations between the black-clad staff and their customers were added the shrill ringing of cash register bells, the cries of lift attendants – Going Up! – and the unhappy shrieks of children large and small whom it had been impossible to park with neighbours: the women of Sydney, or a frightening proportion thereof, were still doing their Christmas shopping, and it could only, so the lieutenant-colonel observed to himself, get much worse as the day wore on, for after lunch the office workers let off early, as so many of them were on this day, would swell the throng. Lady Pyrke sailed sedately down the marble stairs into the mêlée as if stepping into the waters at Baden Baden: at a time like this, thought the lieutenant-colonel, it really pays to be non compos mentis: good luck to the old girl. He watched her proceeding serenely to the handkerchief counter and turned back to face the street…

Each floor of the great building revealed substantially the same sight: of hundreds of women, all caution, all dignity abandoned, fighting for their rights to possession of frocks, skirts, jerseys, shoes, blouses and hats at greatly reduced prices. Who could blame them, who so much as criticise? They were driven not by any impulse so mere as greed or vanity, but by a biological law which impelled them to make themselves fine.

 

comments: For more about this book see two earlier entries. I said then that I do love a book set in a department store, and such a shop at Christmas is even better.

The sales are very important to heroine Lisa because there is a dress she longs and longs for – the Lisette, so it is obviously MEANT for her – and she is hoping and hoping that a reduction in price and perhaps more hours working will mean she can finally afford it… No spoilers here.

Lisa is growing up throughout the book: her real name is Lesley, but she tells her new workmates it is Lisa. And in her friendship with the wonderful Magda, she finds out about all kinds of new things:

 ‘And what’s this?’ [Her father] picked up a slice of salami.

‘That’s salami,’ said Mrs Miles. ‘I got it for Lesley.’

‘There’s no keeping up with you, Lesley,’ said her father. And, he thought, it’s true. ‘Salami, eh,’ said Mr Miles, tasting it. ‘I suppose I could get used to it. Let me try another piece. Quite tasty.’

There’s no keeping up, but also no going back: the Miles family is heading into the 1960s at full tilt.

See the entry on Bond Street Story in 2019, and an Ellery Queen story  - I called the post ‘Is Santa guilty?’.  And the description above very much reminded me of Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn, where the sales are equally important. Emil Zola wrote a wonderful book about a department store back in 1883, Les Bonheurs de Dames – I had to do my own translation from the French in the excerpt for my blogpost.

Back to Ellery Queen for the French Powder Mystery,  with a second post about the drug plotline in the book. And yet more department store murders in this post, which contains a very long and more comprehensive list of my entries on the subject.

The  shop in the book is apparently very clearly based on David Jones in Sydney: shown here in the 1950s (top pic).

The colour picture is the Galeries Lafayette in Paris – wrong era, wrong place. But what a great Christmassy picture. It was taken by Benh LIEU SONG, of Torcy, France. The second black and white picture shows women in California waiting for the sales.