Book Review: The Wardrobe Department by Elaine Garvey
About the book
Mairéad works tirelessly in a run-down West End theatre's wardrobe department - mending shoes, fixing broken zips and even handwashing underwear.
She must also sidestep groping hands backstage and withstand the relentless bullying of the show's producer.
The job was meant to be the first step towards the life Mairéad has always wanted, and yet half of her remains back home in Ireland, along with everything she abandoned there.
A reckoning with the past is coming and, with it, the need to forge a new present - one stitch at a time.
Why we love it
Set over the course of twelve days in the spring of 2002, and moving between London and Ireland, The Wardrobe Department is a quietly introspective novel following Mairéad Sweeney, a young Irish woman who works in the wardrobe department of a London theatre company.
Contrary to what you might expect, it’s hardly glamorous work - more an endless cycle of sorting laundry, pressing costumes and frantically mending broken zips and torn hems in time for each night’s performance.
Currently staging a production of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, the theatre setting acts as a kind of microcosm of the wider world - a diverse mix of characters and personalities, where kindness and camaraderie sit alongside casual misogyny and workplace bullying. For a young woman as insecure and inexperienced as Mairéad, navigating the politics and complexities of this backstage world is proving difficult.
Partway through the novel, Mairéad returns briefly to Ireland for her grandmother’s funeral and it’s here that the novel begins to dig a little deeper into what motivates her. Forced to deal with the oppressive strain of her parents’ unhappy marriage and the unyielding weight of familial expectations, there’s an intriguing parallel between the tensions at home and the drama of the theatre - different scene, same frustrations, tensions and emotional undercurrents.
One of the things I loved most about this book was the way Elaine Garvey leans into the language of fabric and stitching throughout the novel. It gives an insight and understanding into how Mairéad views the world and people around her and mirrors the way she tries so hard to piece things together in her own life, even when the seams don’t quite fit.
Overall, The Wardrobe Department is a beautifully written, character-driven read that balances humour with something more reflective. It’s a story about the difficulty of finding your space in the world, about muddling through even when things feel unbearable, and about the realisation that leaving a place doesn’t mean leaving behind the experiences that shaped you - no matter how much you might wish you could.
