REVIEW: The World at Home by Ginny Kubitz Moyer
… a coming-of-age story about a young woman discovering love, loss, and the power of her own creativity in World War II San Francisco.
San Francisco in 1944 is a bustling place, a revolving door of soldiers and sailors passing through on their way to the war in the Pacific. Twenty-year-old Irene Cleary, however, is not going anywhere. Although she’d love to travel, the seamstress shop she inherited from her mentor keeps her firmly rooted in the only city she’s ever known. She pours her energy into dressmaking and volunteers for the war effort by dancing with servicemen at the USO.
But Irene’s life is transformed when she designs a gown for Cynthia Burke, the socialite whose new marriage to Max, a handsome Chicago businessman, is the talk of the Nob Hill elite. As Irene is drawn into the Burkes’ glamorous, troubled orbit, and as she becomes absorbed in making costumes for the first American performance of a ballet called The Nutcracker, she finds herself on the threshold of exhilarating, perilous new worlds . . . and the most surprising discoveries of all will be the ones about herself.
Set in a vibrant city during a turbulent time, The World at Home is a coming-of-age story about creativity, loss, and the many lessons we learn from love.
CW/TW – suicide, attempted sexual assault, marital infidelity
Dear Ginny Kubitz Moyer,
I enjoyed “A Golden Life” about Golden Age Hollywood and was intrigued by the blurb for this book. In wartime San Francisco, a young woman discovers things about herself while dealing with love and loss.
Irene Cleary grew up in a religious orphanage run by nuns who truly seemed to do their best for the children in their care. As Irene showed an interest in fashion and sewing, she was apprenticed to an older, Russian immigrant seamstress who left Irene her shop when she died. When Irene gets a call from a rich woman who lives on Nob Hill, Irene thinks she might be on the brink of fashionable commissions from the wealthy of San Francisco. Well she is, but things aren’t going to end up quite as she thought.
The first thing I’ll go ahead and say is that this is more like a historical fiction/soap opera/self discovery book than anything else. Irene even listens to radio soaps as she works on some of her jobs. The social distance between Irene and her rich customers couldn’t be more stark as most of them have grown up in family wealth while Irene has scraped and worked hard for her modest success. The rich, though, really don’t want to welcome the nouveau riche.
Irene immediately notices that her new client’s marriage is … odd. Wealthy socialite Cynthia seems to despise her husband from Chicago. Max has a vigor and directness that at first makes Irene a little nervous but when he recognizes her talent and seeks her out to help with the designs for his new nightclub, she gets to know him better. From him she learns that growing up in Cynthia’s family isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Wealth can paper over faults but it won’t eliminate them.
Woven through the story is Irene’s love story with a young Naval officer she met at the USO where she volunteers. From the beginning, it’s clear that something bad has happened so that’s not really a spoiler. As the city watches young men shipped off to fight and possibly die in the Pacific and those young men are often looking for a good time before they go, it’s not obvious how Irene is going to be hurt. It’s only later that we learn what happened and how this is now affecting her.
One of the things that might have eventually been an issue for her is something that Irene sees coming between Max and Cynthia. He’s a self-made man while Cynthia’s set and the people among whom she grew up are an insular world of Old Money. Irene and Max understand and accept things about each other that they don’t have to explain. From her clients gossiping amongst themselves in front of her, Irene also knows some of the scandalous things going on in a few of these marriages.
As the book progresses, Irene will face situations for which the nuns didn’t educate her and she’s going to make mistakes. One of her friends remarks that the war has changed the world dramatically from what they knew as children and Irene will find herself acting one way with one man and, regretting that, another way with a second man. But what feelings are real and which are just for the moment? What will she be willing to give or give up for herself and for others? Remember she’s only twenty and convent raised in the 20s/30s.
Irene has two good friends who each teach her something and who point out things about Irene that sometimes Irene might not want to hear. Irene also gets a chance to make costumes for the first ever production in the US of The Nutcracker ballet and also ‘give back’ by making dresses for some of the orphans for Christmas. All of this will help her realize something about herself and what makes her happy. I ended up liking Irene and how she grows as a person.
I will end by reiterating that Irene discovers a lot about herself and also give a slight spoiler by saying that she’s in a good place as the book ends. I’m not sure I’d called her a flawed character but she has a lot to learn. But note that this is not a romance or ‘historical with romance.’ B
~Jayne
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