Spotlight & Giveaway: The Memory Dress by Jade Beer

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Jade Beer to HJ!

Hi Jade and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, The Memory Dress!

Thank you for having me! I love connecting with American readers – you always bring so much enthusiasm and passion to the discussion around your favourite reads.
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

The book opens at Christie’s auction house in New York in 1997 on the day Princess Diana’s dresses are being sold for charity. It’s an incredibly glamorous start to the story but we immediately understand that one of the dresses listed for sale, dress No 19, is missing. What happened to it?
What follows is an English love story than spans 30 years from 1988 to 2018. The almost present-day action is centred around a beautiful townhouse in the historic city of Bath where a group of strangers are thrown together to save the eldest resident, Meredith who appears to be confused and alone. Meredith’s husband William and daughter Fiona are missing and it’s Jayne, the newest resident, who must overcome her own insecurities to help. As the two unpick Meredith’s story, gleaning clues from her carefully constructed memory room, we’re also introduced to Meredith as a younger woman, living and working in London, meeting and falling in love with her talented husband.
Jayne and Meredith come to rely on one another as they journey back in time together until finally the mystery of the missing dress and a missing husband are solved.
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

‘Back is the only place you can go if you want to make things better. It’s much braver, much harder, don’t you think?’

‘She was here and now she’s not. It all makes me wonder what might appear on my own wall in my own memory room. Would it show such happiness? Such a breadth of experience? A family? A life lived?’

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• I named Meredith the character after Meredith Etherington-Smith, the editor-in-chief of Christie’s magazine and the curator of the Princess of Wales auction. Sadly, I never met her, but I did read her brilliant eulogy describing a woman who ‘was incredibly zeitgeisty, with her bejewelled finger on the pulse of fashion and style and society.’ She had ‘a love for her husband that was deep and profound. She liked to present their union as one of the great love stories of the century.’ I wanted my Meredith to have this too. It gave me the very glamorous premise I love all my stories to have.
• The dog, Margot, who creates the opportunity for Jayne and Meredith to first meet is based on and named after my own dog.
• I couldn’t write about Diana’s fashion and not visit her wedding dress when it conveniently went on display at Kensington Palace during my research period. I don’t think I have ever stood and stared at something for so long!
• For a long time, I thought of the book as being called, Dress No 19, and in the UK it will be published as The Palace Dressmaker. I did also suggest it could be ‘Mrs Chalis goes to the Palace!’
• During a visit to Bath where Jayne and Meredith live, I got chatting to a stranger, a woman called Rebecca, who was moving out of her house that day. It was a Georgian townhouse on one of the most desirable terraces in Bath. She invited me in for a look around the house and the original coach house at the bottom of her garden. My characters had a home!

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

In the case of Meredith and William it is her sheer talent as a seamstress that attracts William’s hard to please eye. Young Meredith refuses to be ignored by a somewhat reticent William. She is gently determined to connect with him.
In the present day, Jake’s physical attractiveness is impossible to miss, and Jayne is initially intimidated by it. For Jake, it’s Jayne’s unassuming nature, her lack of agenda, her absolute determination not to seek out the spotlight for herself that he finds impossible to resist.

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

I cried a fair amount writing this book. My last surviving grandmother lived with dementia, and it was impossible to write some of Meredith’s scenes without thinking of her and the way her life deteriorated towards the end. But it was a visit to Diana’s childhood home and her final resting place, Althorp, that made me feel surprisingly sad. My experience that day is directly mimicked in the scene I wrote when Meredith and Jayne visit together:

‘The house is vast. I park in a field opposite the West gate entrance and immediately see its outline dominating the landscape. The unbroken green of the surrounding fields and trees, the glossy black railings, an endless cloudless sky. Then the immoveable grey stone walls sitting centrally in their picture-perfect surroundings. There is a beautiful simplicity to it that belies the sadness of the story that seeps from Althorp’s walls and creeps unnoticed out into the woods . . .

The path begins to widen out, forking around the lake. We are the only ones here. We walk left towards one of the wide wooden benches. The reeds bordering the lake stand motionless. The water is glass. Even the ducks are respectfully mute. The grass circling the lake has been immaculately cut. The only sounds are the gravel crunching beneath our feet and the lightest whistle of playful birdsong. We take a seat, and I feel an unexpected hit of emotion as I notice the columned temple at the bottom of the lake, Diana’s unmistakeable black silhouette visible from here.

Meredith’s sigh is full of sorrow.

‘Such a ridiculous waste,’ she says looking towards the small rowing boat that is tethered by a rope to the central island.
‘There can’t be anyone who would disagree with you on that, Meredith,’ I say softly.
Then we sit there like that for the next half an hour, both contemplating the tragedy of the loss, until I spot a trickle of tourists filing towards us, picking up speed as they realise they are reaching the finale of the tour, raising their cameras and phones, the irony of the intrusion completely lost on them.’

Readers should read this book….

…if they love an intricate family mystery and an enduring love story that is set against the glamorous backdrop of royal fashion. Yes, there is romance and humour, but there is also an unmistakable focus on the power of strong female friendships that transcend age.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

I am currently torn between two book ideas. One is fully researched and ready to write. It has my favourite themes of fashion and female relationships at its heart and is dual timeline. It feels like a very atmospheric book to me already, I can see the scenes unfolding. But I am also considering a more contemporary novel which places a group of women from all walks of life at the centre of the story. Ideally, I would have time to write both!
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: 1 giveaway winner, U.S. only

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: What or who would be on your own memory wall? In years from now who are the people you would never want to forget? OR If you could wear one dress that Diana owned, which one would it be?

 
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Book Info:

A missing husband and a dress once owned by Princess Diana set two very different women on paths of discovery that will change both their lives forever in this dazzling new novel from the author of The Last Dress from Paris.

England, 2018: Jayne is quiet. She keeps to herself and has no grand expectations for her days. But after a chance encounter with her elderly neighbor, Meredith, Jayne is forced to reevaluate her determination to keep the world at a distance. Meredith’s dust-covered home is chaotic and neglected. And slowly, Jayne starts to grasp that Meredith herself is quite lost. She can’t seem to remember anything: what she last ate, when she last went out or saw her daughter, or even Jayne’s name, despite what are becoming frequent visits.

But most alarmingly, Meredith can’t remember where her husband is.

Unable to sit by and watch Meredith hurting, Jayne promises she’ll find William. But how can she when the biggest clue Jayne has is a mystery itself: a stunning couture gown with a note declaring it a personal gift to Meredith…from Princess Diana.

England, 1988: Meredith is always calm. You have to be when working for one of the most iconic women in the world. Just as the stitches she uses to create Princess Diana’s wardrobe are steady and stable, so is Meredith. Until she finds herself feeling off-kilter and untethered by an unexpected connection with someone in the workshop. As Meredith finds herself swept up in life and love for the first time, everything she’s ever dreamed about seems in reach…if only she can be brave enough to take it.
 
 

Meet the Author:

Jade Beer is an award-winning editor, journalist, and novelist who has worked across the UK national press for more than twenty years. Most recently, she was the editor in chief of Condé Nast’s Brides. She also writes for other leading titles, including the Sunday Times Style, The Telegraph, Glamour, Stella magazine, and is one of the Mail on Sunday’s regular fiction and nonfiction book reviewers. Jade splits her time between London and the Cotswolds, where she lives with her husband and two daughters.