Customer Reviews
Lacklustre, although the writing is good - By: BookWorm, 28 Sep 2008 
A rather insipid tale, though Grant is a good enough writer to hold the attention, it's hard to really say what 'The Clothes on Their Backs' is really about. Maybe there's some hugely deep inner meaning that I've completely missed. Although not a lot happens & it's not particularly complex, I still felt that it never really came together to make a consistent whole.
The central character, Vivien, I found very hard to empathise with. Even when tragedy touched her life it was hard to care. It wasn't that she was unpleasant, just rather uninteresting. Vivien's timid immigrant parents & larger-than-life uncle are more vivid characters although they were just a bit too extreme & contrasting to ring true.
The actual writing is good, with nice descriptive passages. The structure also works well. But the ending is rather hurried & out of keeping with the pace of the rest of the story, & the lack of feeling I had for the characters meant I felt remote from the story.
I would read another book by Grant as the quality was decent, it just wasn't a story that particularly drew me in. Whether it deserves to be shortlisted for the Booker prize I'm not so sure, although it is better than some of the other winners I've read. It might appeal more to people with some more personal connection to the events - immigrants (particularly from Eastern Europe), people who grew upin the same era, or people with Jewish heritage, as these are all topics exploredin the novel. But for me it didn't really work out.
Got my back up - By: A reader, 25 Sep 2008 
Set mainlyin the 1970s, "The Clothes on Their Backs" by Linda Grant is narrated by Vivien Kovacs, a second generation Hungarian immigrant to London. Her parents, Ervin & Bertha Kovacs, fled Hungary before WW2 for fear of persecution as Jews. Ervin is a jeweller, & the Kovacs lead quiet, timid lives, not wanting to make themselves conspicuous as outsiders. Vivien is shy but goes to York University, where she not only gains a degree but a husband. However, her husband dies on honeymoon, & Vivien returns to Londonin a state of confusion & dislocation. In the early stages of pregnancy, she must have an abortion. Looking for work, Vivien encounters her estranged uncle, Sandor Kovacs. Sandor is the black sheep of the family, a convicted slum landlordin the manner of Rachman, who wants to tell his side of the story. So Vivien becomes his secretary, compiling his autobiography, out of which we learn about Sandor's harsh experiencesin Hungary & the events which turned him into the unpleasant character he became.
The title of the book comes from the running theme of the characters dressing themselves to change their identities. Vivien, when she goes to university, makes a splash by dressingin vintage clothing. Uncle Sandor dressesin the tasteless but expensive clothes of a spiv. And so on. It's not much of a thematic statement beyond that, but it works initially as the concept behind the title, where immigrants & others arrivein a new environment with the chance to project a new identity.
Vivien herself goes through various sartorial metamorphoses, to signal her confused search for identity. But the problem with Vivien as a character is that the major events of her life seem perfunctory - the death of her husband, the abortion. Worse is the encounter with Sandor, whom she met once as a little girl. It is pure coincidence - she just happens to sit next to him on a park bench. And, even worse, Vivien pretends not to be his niece, but to be a girl called Miranda, which Sandor accepts without question. He may well know about her deception, but doesn't act as if he does at all. I understood that this might fit with a novel about identity, but by this point I had become hugely disappointed with the undramatic & cursory approach to major story points. As for Sandor's story, which I won't spoil (but rest assured it's utterly predictable), the author chooses to reveal itin the most mundane of ways, just by him dictating it to "Miranda".
Colouful and engaging - By: NB, 16 Sep 2008 
As colourful as the cover photo, this is a lush book - with intricately written characters, beautiful imagery, atmospheric descriptions of the colours, smells & tastes of 70s London & a fantastic story which made me get a library finein order to finish it, as someone else wanted it.
Problems with the narrator - By: S. B. Kelly, 19 Jul 2008 It's not that this is a bad book, but it disappoints after the marvellous When I Lived In Modern Times.
On page 188, the narrator, Vivian, says, 'Whenever I try to describe this early part of my life to people I feel that they don't have a clue, or maybe I don't know how to explain myself properly.' This sums up beautifully how I felt about Vivian: she didn't seem to come alive, or to be able to explain who she was or where she came from or why she does anything that she does.
Grant wishes implausible disasters on Vivian: her husband dies perfunctorily on their honeymoon. No wonder poor Vivian is confused; she must be wondering what she's done to make the gods hate her so much as she lurches around from crisis to crisis.
Like Vivian, I livedin Londonin the late 70s, but I didn't recognise the London she describes, or the peoplein it.
In sum, this felt like the draft of a novel, waiting another big edit before it's finished.
Even 'monsters' have a human side - By: Ralph Blumenau, 23 May 2008 It takes some time before the main plot of the book really gets into its stride. The story is told by Vivien, the daughter of Ervin & Bertha Kovacs, Jews who had fled to London from the antisemitismin pre-war Hungary. They are timid people, desperate not to get into any further trouble, & they have been so traumatized by their past that they never talk about it. For example, Vivien has been told nothing about her grandparents, though she does know that Ervin has an elder brother, Sándor, who is the black sheep of the family & who arrivedin England only after 1956. When Vivien was ten, she had once caught a glimpse of Sándor, who turned up at their front door, only to be driven away by his brother, who would not explain to Vivien why he hated his brother so & who forbade any mention of himin the house; but soon afterwards there were reports on television about his arrest, & then books & newspaper articles programmes appear about Sándor, who, for his crimes as a particularly notorious & vicious rack landlord, had been sent to prison for fourteen years.
In 1977 Vivien, aged 24 & out of a job, accidentally sits next to him on a park bench: she recognizes him, but does not tell him who she is, though we are told fairly early on that he did realize who she was. Both of them will for a long time keep up the pretence that she is someone called Miranda. The old man is looking for someone to tape-record & then write up the story of his life, & Vivien takes on the job. In the course of it she learns about the past of which her parents had never spoken - it covers the years from 1916 to the Hungarian uprising of 1956. And she also learns what events had turned her father into such an anxious & timid creature, while Sándor, who had had an infinitely worse timein Hungary during the war, had learnt from them that only the tough, ruthless & selfish survive. But Vivien gradually begins to realize that even a `monster' has a human side. The first climax comes about two thirds through the bookin which, well described as it is, her collusion is to me frankly unbelievable. The second climax, near the end & involving the novel's secondary plot of Vivien's relationship with one of her uncle's tenants, also strikes me as somewhat forced.
The story is set against the time when racist thugs of the National Front were very active & intimidatingin certain London neighbourhoods, & that of course was a frightening reminder to the generation of refugees.
One theme of the book is that Vivien, partly because she had been keptin such ignorance of her roots, does not really know who she is. As a young woman & wanting to escape from the stifling atmosphere of her home, she goes through various styles of living, each of which involves its own way of dressing up. The clothes of all the characters are describedin detail throughout the book, & are symbolic of their owners' lives. `The clothes you wear are a metamorphosis. They change you from the outside in' is Vivien's rather odd generalization near the end - true perhaps of the clothes Vivien is given, less so surely of those she has chosen.
Some thingsin this book ring very true; others less so; but it is a good read; & when you have finished the book, you will want to read the first chapter, setin 2006, again.
