Interview with M.A. McLaughlin - Author of 'The Lost Dresses of Italy'
My review is found here.
Novel out on February 6th, 2024
About the author:
M.A. McLaughlin is the award-winning author of a historical mystery trilogy: Claire's Last Secret, A Shadowed Fate, and Forever Past, all set around the Byron/Shelley circle in nineteenth-century Italy. Her novels have been published by Severn House (U.K. and U.S.) and Thomas Schluck (Germany), earning starred reviews in Publisher's Weekly, as well as a gold medal for historical fiction in the Florida Writers Association's Literary Palm Award. Her work has been featured internationally in blogs, journals, and websites. Her new novel, The Lost Dresses of Italy, will be published by Alcove Press in February 6th, 2024.
To read more about Marty and her books, visit her website.
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Interview with M.A. McLaughlin - Author of 'The Lost Dresses of Italy'
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Welcome, Marty! Please share the inspiration behind The Lost Dresses of Italy and a brief description of the story?
The impetus for this novel had several seemingly unconnected threads (pun intended), including my life-long love of Christina Rossetti’s poetry, the Phantom Thread film about couture fashion, and an event from my past involving hidden items in a trunk. Like every writer, I file away things in the back of mind until one day, they coalesce into a story idea. First, I’d like to speak of Rossetti—a Victorian poet of some renown during her time but somewhat forgotten today. Her poetry is simply transcendent, especially the lyrics and sonnets. She was part of the famous Rossetti family of artists, poets, and revolutionaries; but, she was also a very private woman. Her letters are somewhat prosaic, never revealing anything too personal, so I always had questions about her life, especially the three-week journey to northern Italy with her brother, William, and their mother. Afterwards, Rossetti wrote only one letter and one poem that referenced it; however, when she returned to London, she broke off with her suitor and, later, wrote a highly-sensual sonnet sequence, the Monna Innominata—the “hidden woman.”
What happened on that trip? Was she the hidden woman? I wanted to fill in the blanks because it seemed to me that it might have had a romantic element. As I began to sketch out the plot in 2021, I realized that I wanted to write the book as a dual narrative with a post-WWII costume curator who’s been asked to create an exhibit of Rossetti’s three dresses which were left hidden for a century in a trunk in Verona; the dresses hold the clues to what happened. That part of my novel was inspired by a scene in Phantom Thread, depicting seamstresses hiding little objects in the seams and hems of the couture gowns they create. I made Rossetti’s dresses central to solving the mystery. Also, the idea of the trunk holding secret objects harkens back to an episode when I was eighteen and my mother and I went through my recently deceased great-aunt’s cedar chest and found a marriage license, wedding sheets, and antique clothing. Apparently, she’d had a husband whom no one knew about for over twenty years—as we later confirmed. I never forgot that day when we opened the lavender-scented trunk and found those intimate, concealed items neatly packed away. It was at that point in my life, I realized that everyone has secrets, and a writer should always dig for what people hide; that’s where stories grow interesting—like in the case of Christina Rossetti.
What was your most haunting moment during the writing of The Lost Dresses of Italy and/or memorable experience (including any exciting research trips you took that provided inspiration)?
One of my most haunting moments happened when I was planning and writing the scene set at Juliet’s Tomb in Verona (from Shakespeare’s famous play, Romeo and Juliet which is set there). My husband, Jim, and I had travelled to northern Italy to research the book, and we visited that famous site, just outside the city walls of Verona. It was enchanting to stroll through the garden and see the vine-covered chapel where Juliet’s red marble sarcophagus had lay for centuries (it’s now on a lower level). Very romantic to share with Jim, too! I knew when I saw that spot, it would be significant to Christina Rossetti in my book. So, it became the place where she and her newfound love, Angelo, declare their feelings, standing in front of Juliet’s tomb and watching a lone candle burn, both aware that it’s most likely a deserted tomb of a purely fictional character; but that doesn’t matter. As Angelo says, “they pay homage . . . to the spirit of the subject”—love. That moment is a turning point for them, and it still stays with me; I even framed a picture of Jim and I sitting in the garden. Ah, amore.
Christina Rossetti
Do you have a favourite poem of Christina Rossetti’s that you referred to in the novel and what significance does it have in the story?
Oh, definitely—Christina Rossetti’s Fata Morgana poem, which she composed years after my novel takes place. It is a deceptively simple lyric with only three stanzas, and I quote it in Chapter Three after Marianne finds a letter on which Christina has scrawled this phrase across the top. The poem becomes central to the mystery of what happened to Christina in Italy (I can’t give any spoilers!). But . . . I can say it begins with the almost perfectly-written first stanza about capturing an elusive “phantom”:
A blue-eyed phantom far before
Is laughing, leaping toward the sun;
Like lead I chase it evermore
I pant and run.
The Fata Morgana has many meanings discussed in the book: for Italians, it denotes not only a “phantom mirage” but the harbinger of a coming tragedy—foreshadowing what is to come in the novel—but for Christina, it is the “phantom love” that she chases but always seems just out of reach. That’s all I can say, but I do think everyone has a Fata Morgana, a dream that they chase but somehow remains elusive—and yet we keep reaching for it. And the poem reminds us to never give up on achieving our dreams.
Did you encounter any challenges writing the two timelines of 1865 and 1947? If so, how did you overcome them?
I like writing dual narrative novels because it gives me a huge amount of space to work out my plot on two canvases, so to speak. Personally, I’m steeped in the nineteenth century because that’s my academic specialty, and I love everything about the Romantic and Victorian eras—especially the poets and writers. So, I was pretty comfortable with that narrative thread. However, I had to do quite a bit of research about Verona, Italy, in 1947, including the post-war recovery challenges, the effects of the war on the survivors, and the re-emergence of the Italian fashion industry. That part took almost a year and included a research trip to Milan, Lake Como, Verona, and Florence—the adventurous aspect of writing historical mysteries set in Italy. Once I decided to center the two narratives around Christina Rossetti’s lost dresses, it gave me an emotional touchpoint for the novel, and that helped me to overcome the challenge of bringing the two storylines together.
What is the importance of the nightingale in The Lost Dresses of Italy and what is this bird’s place in literature?
The “nightingale” is a bird that sings only at night and has had many poetic incarnations from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale”—and it always seems to be a symbol of both love and loss. Juliet references the nightingale when Romeo is about to leave her in the early morning, trying to persuade him that the night bird’s song means he can linger a little longer, but he must leave or die. Similarly, Keats sees the nightingale as a metaphor for the mixture of pain and joy in life. However, I decided to include it in my book mainly because Christina did take an evening boat trip on Lake Como where she heard the nightingale’s song, about which she wrote in a letter to her friend, Anne Gilchrist. Of course, I gave this episode more emotional impact because her suitor, Angelo, is with her when she hears the bird sing, and he says it is only a good omen; that moment is the beginning of their relationship.
Marianne is a textile historian. Why did you choose this profession for her and how does it help in telling the story?
I have to admit that I love fashion and have always wanted to make it pivotal to one of my novels. But I never seemed to find the right way to accomplish it because the whole subject seemed slightly frivolous—until I was listening to a costume curator give an interview on National Public Radio. Something clicked. I was hooked on how textile artifacts could reveal so much about the past and the person who wore them; and, I researched everything I could about this profession—reading articles, contacting curators, and watching YouTube videos about the creation of clothing exhibits. It was all fascinating, and I realized that would be a perfect way to reveal Christina Rossetti’s secrets: make my twentieth-century protagonist a costume curator who examines her lost dresses. Delving into that aspect of fashion was pure fun.
Was it challenging to fictionalise Christina and Dante Gabriel since they were both real people? Did you need to be inventive or stick more to the known facts?
Before I started my novel, I knew quite a bit about the Rossetti family because I’ve studied and taught nineteenth-century poets for most of academic career and, yet, fictionalising a literary figure always presents quite a few challenges. I had to re-create them as characters within a historical narrative which is a tricky balance of blending fact and imaginative world-building because I want to “popularize” them in a way that pays homage to their brilliant work and extraordinary lives but, also, acknowledge a twenty-first century reading audience who wants to read a compelling narrative. The siblings also presented very different personas to the world: Christina was a reserved person; whereas, Dante Gabriel was outgoing and charismatic. The key is to find the private person behind the public figure, and that is often revealed through the journals, letters, and poems. At the end of the day as a writer, I have to make certain that I’ve stuck to the facts about the events in their lives and added fictional aspects that are aligned with the actual person. Thus, I tried to make every scene and each character as accurate as possible.
Dante Gabrielle Rossetti Artwork - Astarte Syriaca
