Customer Reviews

SOMETHING WHOLESALE: My Life in the Rag Trade

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Newby writes amusingly about his post war experiences but they are nowhere near as interesting or moving as "Love and war in the Appenines", his book about imprisonment and love in World War Two Italy. Now married to his Slovenian sweetheart Wanda, who helped him evade capture, Newby finds himself working for the struggling London fashion firm run by his father. He is no good at the job and has no fun trying to sell frmupy clothes to staid and frumpy clothes stores around Britain. Newby expertly delves into the characters of his father, who is only happy when in a rowing scull, and the other eccentrics at the firm. The problem is that unless you have an abiding interest in and knowledge of the clothes trade, you'll quickly bog down in yet another torpid tale of which Scottish dowager looked disapprovingly at a certain unimpressive dress. The book quickly bogs down and, very disappointingly, doesn't focus anywhere near enough on the formidable Wanda.

This is Eric Newby's best book, even better than his travel books. On the surface, it is a book about working in his family's wholesale clothing firm, but it is really an ode to his father. The preface, in which he conveys the reader through a presumed chronology of his dad's life by describing family photos, is a classic. The characterizations of the people who work at the firm, and the buyers who come to negotiate purchases, are hilarious. Though most of the book describes Newby's comings and goings in the conduct of the business, the frequently interlaced episodes of life with father, who ran the business, conveys the sense of respect Newby had for his dad. A great book.

SOMETHING WHOLESALE, by Eric Newby, was on my must-read list after reading the first two chapters of "A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush." This was his account of trekking in Afghanistan in more peaceful times, and it opens with an account of the end of his career in the wholesale clothing trade.

He inherited the trade from his parents, largely for lack of an alternative. Every paragraph reveals the absurdity of the business he was in; perhaps the problem was that his parents did not deal in clothes that were of particular interest to the British. (They made a dress and coat for his wife, who burst into tears when she tried them on; they were burned in their back yard.)

Kevin L. Mahoney