Diorissimo

     What a lovely little book this is! Paul Gallico's Flowers for Mrs. Harris is the delightful tale of a London charlady's yearning for a Dior dress, how she sets about getting one and what happens to her and to those she meets along the way, all of whom benefit from their encounter with this unlikely fairy godmother.

     My Penguin copy says: "Paul Gallico possesses a unique talent for presenting fairy tales in modern dress. A reader must have grown old and crusty if he has closed his mind to so much charm", and as one whose mind is very much open to such things and who retains the capacity to be entranced and uplifted by books, I can thoroughly recommend it.

    We meet Mrs. Ada Harris on a flight to Paris - a day trip with the sole purpose of buying a dress from the House of Dior. How she has the means to fund this extravagant purchase I shan't reveal, nor shall I say what happens to her when she reaches her destination, but here's a snippet from the couturier's grey-carpeted interior:

"She found herself in a curtained-off cubicle.....Each cubicle held a woman like a queen bee in a cell, and through the corridors rushed the worker bees with the honey - armfuls of frilly, frothy garments in colours of plum, raspberry, tamarind, and peach, gentian-flower, cowslip, damask rose and orchid.....Here was indeed woman's secret world ... the battlefield where the struggle against the ravages of age was carried on with the weapons of the dressmaker's art and where fortunes were spent in a single afternoon".

    From one charming book to others, I hope: can anyone recommend other "fairy tales in modern dress", or books which just make you feel better for reading them? And thanks again to Justine for writing about Mrs. Harris the other day - I hadn't heard of it before I read her post.